Purr's Guide to Tourism

[kgpurrs 107]

Welcome to Tourgasm

 

 

Intro and Useful Information

 

I am going to create this guide and update it from time to time.  The first part of this guide is going to be the initial starting of your tourist city.

 

I specifically chose this screenshot to explain how tourism works and to address the numerous threads and questions people have on tourism. 

 

Approval Rating

Commercial Approval Rating

 

There are two important ratings, attraction rating (culture buildings, gambling buildings, parks, pollution) and approval rating.  Attraction rating is your cap on tourists, and Approval rating is how close to the cap tourists will appear and stay in your city. 

 

Public Transportation

 

Bus Station

Train Station (Missing from Picture with Casino)

 

Place your Bus Station next to the Expo Center, but do not put any bus stops in your city.  Tourists will spawn from the Bus Station and use Taxi's for Transportation.  Bus Stops only cause traffic in your city, and lower your approval rating because bus are always late to their stops.  Place your Train Station next to your Casino and adjacent to your expo center.

 

Guide

 

Selecting your City:  Only two important things to keep in mind when selecting your city, you must have rail and you must have ferry available in your city.  That's it.

 

Building your City:  Place a Water Tower and Wind Power Plant, then build a 2 to 1 ratio of Residential to Commercial.  Place your town hall.  Avoid medium wealth residential.  Keep your services, schools, etc. separated so they don't spawn medium wealth land value.  Basic principle is KISS (Keep it Simple Stupid), Medium wealth this early only complicates everything and you really don't want to focus on any of that.  Half of your map (or more) should be dirt or low density R and C.  Tax rate at 9%.  Your goal is to get to 5000 population as quick as possible to get utilities.  Once you get utilities get a sewage treatment plant.  Continue getting more utilities and city services as you grow your R and C.  Make sure your approval is in the green 80-90% and do your best to keep it there.  Once you have all city services in place you are ready to grow to medium density roads.

 

Town Hall Upgrades: Utilities (5k), Transportation (15k), Safety (30k), Tourism (75k).  (Education and Finance are for other cities in the region)

 

Education: One Grade School with enough bus stops to get 150 students on low density roads.  At half of your city at medium density, upgrade this to two more classrooms.  At your entire city at medium density, upgrade to full class rooms and get a community college.  (If you are playing multiplayer or when you decide to create your second city in your private region, department of education will allow you to get a high school and gymnasium which improves your attraction rating).

 

Tourism Specialization

 

Place your Expo Center and Bus Station next to each other and as close as possible to the highway entrance and the railroad at the same time.  Once you get a number of hotels to spawn, you can expand your revenues to Gambling Specialization.  The Gambling is optional but brings in nice additional hourly revenues at the cost of crime.  But with proper education and police (10 squad cars) you can keep your approval rating at 95%+ no problem.  Lower your taxes for the low wealth to 7%.

 

It's really that simple, with over 3000 tourists (that continue to come everyday), and a nice revenue stream going, the sky is the limit.  Just make sure you follow the basics in this guide, each tourism wealth level follows the same basics.

 

Tourist Wealth Level Expansion

 

 

These screenshots were taken after placing my Globe Theater and Harbor, in between the photos the Harbor dropped off 1000 tourists.  The harbor will continue to drop off 1000 tourists every 4-6 hours depending on your attraction rating and approval rating.

 

By this time you should be around 50-60k population.  You should have a police precinct (if you have Casino revenues), a Hospital (place in middle of city), and a large fire station (also place in middle of city).  For police precinct I suggest placing one at one of end of town, and a police station at the other end of town in your high wealth area.  For the fire station I build an airport and get 1 helicopter pad.  Then I delete the airport (my city is not ready for an airport yet, I need a much higher attraction rating with department of tourism).  Helicopter fire protection and two fire trucks keep me at 0 burned down buildings and 0 abandoned buildings.  I begin my wealth expansion with the Mayors mansion where I want my high wealth area to be.  I continue to upgrade to the highest level while placing high wealth parks.  This will spill over into your low wealth areas and they will become medium wealth areas.  Your goal is to get high density medium wealth and high density high wealth.  Medium density Medium wealth will spill over into your medium density low wealth.

 

Medium and High wealth hotels will begin to spawn, and your population will increase to 75,000 and you can get your final town hall upgrade: Department of Tourism.  With your wealth level expansion of your city, you are now ready for wealth level expansion of your tourism!  Place a medium wealth tourist park and convert a portion of your low wealth into medium wealth.  Your goal is to get to 75,000, but your goal is not to stay at 75,000 population.  Once you have your Department of Tourism you are ready to drop your population back to 50,000 via wealth conversion.

 

You are now ready to expand your tourism attraction rating and supplement revenues with a sleek casino!

[kgpurrs 107]

Great Work: International Airport

 

 

When you are ready for your International Airport, place a city airport and landmark in your city.  The landmark will generate revenues and you will have unlocked the Great Work.  Next you will select a city in your cities region that has oil and either coal or ore (or both).  The screenshot city above had ore in addition to coal, but there was enough coal to easily get the smelting division in the Metals HQ, so I was importing raw ore instead of mining it.  The great work is time intensive and very expensive.  I use this city for my two remaining city hall upgrades (Finance and Education).  In addition to drilling for oil, mining coal, and smelting metal and alloy, and recycling metal and alloy, I set this city up exactly as I did my Tourist City.  The Expo Center and Casino easily support my Great Work operation, and all you need now, is patience.  When crude oil finishes, you can begin to export it, when alloy finishes you can begin to export it, and when metal finishes you can export that as well.  Feel free to do what you like with this city now, you may leave it as it stands as an exporting cash cow or take advantage of your new great work.

 

Wealth Up: High Wealth Tourism

 

 

Now that you have 4 forms of incoming transportation (Bus for Low Wealth, Train for Low Wealth and Medium Wealth, Ferry for Medium Wealth and High Wealth, and Airport for Medium and High Wealth) in addition to your International Airport you are ready for High Wealth Tourism.  I put a high wealth Opera House attraction in my city and I have 2000 high wealth and 500 medium wealth tourists.  There are also about 300-500 high wealth tourists in front of the Opera House but sadly the show is full.  The Globe has another 550 medium wealth tourists and the Expo Center has another 600 medium wealth tourists.

 

To put those numbers in perspective, potential Casino Revenues for high wealth tourists are 2300 * 56 = 128800 Revenue/Hr, and 1650 * 20 = 33000 Revenue/Hr

 

 

Casino Royale

 

***Currently Bugged***

 

So my High Wealth Casino was filled to capacity, and I plopped down two roulette houses but sadly they are bugged.  They do not increase high wealth tourist capacity and with it being the only upgrade to capacity for this casino it was only making 50k a day.  When this is fixed I will resume Tourgasm and this guide.  In addition to this brutal game breaking bug, I am getting a disaster in my city every single day, likely another bug.

 

My goal was to supplement my city with high casino revenues now that my tourist population was high and expand my tourism to sports arena and an additional landmark.  I was going to redesign my avenues and roads and move to high density population.

[bz2king 3]

This is an amazing guide, thank you for the info, it touched on quite a few issues i was having as far as starting a tourism city, oddly enough, thats the last specialization I have not been successful with. Based on your guide here, I believe I may have been going at it in the wrong direction. I always began with the casino and started moving into the other aspects, such as the expo center. Thanks for the time you put in

[jas19illini 2]

Welcome to Tourgasm

Intro and Useful Information

I am going to create this guide and update it from time to time. The first part of this guide is going to be the initial starting of your tourist city.

I specifically chose this screenshot to explain how tourism works and to address the numerous threads and questions people have on tourism.

Approval Rating

Commercial Approval Rating

There are two important ratings, attraction rating (culture buildings, gambling buildings, parks, pollution) and approval rating. Attraction rating is your cap on tourists, and Approval rating is how close to the cap tourists will appear and stay in your city.

Public Transportation

Bus Station

Train Station (Missing from Picture with Casino)

Place your Bus Station next to the Expo Center, but do not put any bus stops in your city. Tourists will spawn from the Bus Station and use Taxi's for Transportation. Bus Stops only cause traffic in your city, and lower your approval rating because bus are always late to their stops. Place your Train Station next to your Casino and adjacent to your expo center.

Guide

Selecting your City: Only two important things to keep in mind when selecting your city, you must have rail and you must have ferry available in your city. That's it.

Building your City: Place a Water Tower and Wind Power Plant, then build a 2 to 1 ratio of Residential to Commercial. Place your town hall. Avoid medium wealth residential. Keep your services, schools, etc. separated so they don't spawn medium wealth land value. Basic principle is KISS (Keep it Simple Stupid), Medium wealth this early only complicates everything and you really don't want to focus on any of that. Half of your map (or more) should be dirt or low density R and C. Tax rate at 9%. Your goal is to get to 5000 population as quick as possible to get utilities. Once you get utilities get a sewage treatment plant. Continue getting more utilities and city services as you grow your R and C. Make sure your approval is in the green 80-90% and do your best to keep it there. Once you have all city services in place you are ready to grow to medium density roads.

Town Hall Upgrades: Utilities (5k), Transportation (15k), Safety (30k), Tourism (75k). (Education and Finance are for other cities in the region)

Education: One Grade School with enough bus stops to get 150 students on low density roads. At half of your city at medium density, upgrade this to two more classrooms. At your entire city at medium density, upgrade to full class rooms and get a community college. (If you are playing multiplayer or when you decide to create your second city in your private region, department of education will allow you to get a high school and gymnasium which improves your attraction rating).

Tourism Specialization

Place your Expo Center and Bus Station next to each other and as close as possible to the highway entrance and the railroad at the same time. Once you get a number of hotels to spawn, you can expand your revenues to Gambling Specialization. The Gambling is optional but brings in nice additional hourly revenues at the cost of crime. But with proper education and police (10 squad cars) you can keep your approval rating at 95%+ no problem. Lower your taxes for the low wealth to 7%.

It's really that simple, with over 3000 tourists (that continue to come everyday), and a nice revenue stream going, the sky is the limit. Just make sure you follow the basics in this guide, each tourism wealth level follows the same basics.

Tourist Wealth Level Expansion

These screenshots were taken after placing my Globe Theater and Harbor, in between the photos the Harbor dropped off 1000 tourists. The harbor will continue to drop off 1000 tourists every 4-6 hours depending on your attraction rating and approval rating.

By this time you should be around 50-60k population. You should have a police precinct (if you have Casino revenues), a Hospital (place in middle of city), and a large fire station (also place in middle of city). For police precinct I suggest placing one at one of end of town, and a police station at the other end of town in your high wealth area. For the fire station I build an airport and get 1 helicopter pad. Then I delete the airport (my city is not ready for an airport yet, I need a much higher attraction rating with department of tourism). Helicopter fire protection and two fire trucks keep me at 0 burned down buildings and 0 abandoned buildings. I begin my wealth expansion with the Mayors mansion where I want my high wealth area to be. I continue to upgrade to the highest level while placing high wealth parks. This will spill over into your low wealth areas and they will become medium wealth areas. Your goal is to get high density medium wealth and high density high wealth. Medium density Medium wealth will spill over into your medium density low wealth.

Medium and High wealth hotels will begin to spawn, and your population will increase to 75,000 and you can get your final town hall upgrade: Department of Tourism. With your wealth level expansion of your city, you are now ready for wealth level expansion of your tourism! Place a medium wealth tourist park and convert a portion of your low wealth into medium wealth. Your goal is to get to 75,000, but your goal is not to stay at 75,000 population. Once you have your Department of Tourism you are ready to drop your population back to 50,000 via wealth conversion.

You are now ready to expand your tourism attraction rating and supplement revenues with a sleek casino!

U say drop ur population back down to 50k via wealth conversion. Can u elaborate please? Thanks.

[Griffon 19]

U say drop ur population back down to 50k via wealth conversion. Can u elaborate please? Thanks.

I think I could even answer this, low wealth buildings hold more people than medium wealth and high wealth buildings, by increasing land value you get higher wealth people but the population drops because the same space now holds less people, I guess they figure higher wealth people need more space to live

 

therefore same amount of ground space, higher wealth people using more living space, less total people living in your city now by upgrading land value

 

this is also why it's the easiest to get high density high wealth buildings and hardest to get high density low wealth buildings (at least for me)

[kgpurrs 107]

Update:

 

High Wealth Tourism

 

My city is almost finished.  I have room for a Stadium to replace my Expo Center, but I will need to add a street car system, redesign my roads and avenues and zones to support high density and high population.  I also have another culture building from my department of tourism available, and I will likely be destroying the Globe Theater for another attraction.

 

But first, I am going to concentrate on maximizing my Casino Revenues and will update that section when I am satisfied. 

 

This guide would be so much easier if I just didn't have a disaster EVERY SINGLE DAY!!!  Must be some sort of Bug, I don't know, but this is ridiculous...

[Vaikin 10]

For me so far, disasters come in insane sprees. I'll get none for days and days and then get them every 20 minutes for a few hours.

[PeterWeaver 2]

Thanks a million Purr, great stuff

[HugeF1 0]

No mention of crime. Tourism's biggest killer IMO. Even a few crimes a day in your main commercial zones will drive people away.

 

By far my biggest expense (a massive 9 grand an hour) is Policing). One bad night at the EXPO and I'm in the red.

[kgpurrs 107]

No mention of crime. Tourism's biggest killer IMO. Even a few crimes a day in your main commercial zones will drive people away.

 

By far my biggest expense (a massive 9 grand an hour) is Policing). One bad night at the EXPO and I'm in the red.

 

Well, to be fair, I did mention if you want to increase revenues you can add a casino at the cost of crime.  I also gave explanation into Education and if someone was following the guide and doing that step, they can control crime well in advance of the casino, once the casino revenues start generating you can get the police precint with instant crime alert tower which pretty much stops all crime when you have 10 patrol cars in the precinct and another 2-4 in your higher wealth areas.  Since this wasn't a casino tutorial I didn't go into huge details of crime.

[parenzo 4]

some good stuff OP. i've been using simular tactics im my gamble/tourism city...

what I also noticed u really have to pay atten. to how u place your commer. zones and also traffic,cos when u have a big number of tourist and no commer. zones/mass transit close to tourist attraction they go to next closest comm. zone by taxi(yellow cars) and if it is mixed with your resid. area u are in deep sh.. with your traffic,jams can last for days and crime will explode beyond control.

 

also I completly gave up from casinos,they are just not reliable source of income and they are dependable of what time of a day is or if there are any events in city,also hourly expence and power demand are huge, I use only upgraded gambl. houses placed strat. around tourist atract.'s and close to my port/train stations,just 1 gambl. house very close to train st. making 50k profit per day ,and thats def. best return for pretty low expense of runing it

[Griffon 19]

I was following this guide too and in the city I tried, I built an international airport and didn't build casinos until I had 3.5k tourists per day and only did 2 events the entire time, as soon as I built casinos, they weren't even near my mass transit and already at max capacity, I also added Big Ben, the Effie Tower, and Empire State Building, I went from 5k/h to 15k/h with a police precinct and a french police station added after I added the casinos and culture buildings were, my police coverage was dark blue throughout my city and my income was fairly reliable, it went down to 11k/h at the least

 

defiantly the most detailed and best tourism guide I found, thank you

[NovaBlazer 10]

Question: 

 

Is the limit of Tourisim buildings you can place always a hard cap of 3? Or does something else like city population or the amount of tourists that you have coming in something that will raise that cap?

[kgpurrs 107]

Question: 

 

Is the limit of Tourisim buildings you can place always a hard cap of 3? Or does something else like city population or the amount of tourists that you have coming in something that will raise that cap?

You can only place 3 landmarks, but you can have as many Expo Centers and Stadiums as you wish.

[Grimhood 1]

Tried my first tourism city last night. Everything was looking good until I plopped the bus station, train station, and expo center. My city was immediately invaded by taxis, and now my traffic is a disaster.

So I think I will start over. The key is to put lots of commercial next to the expo/transit center???

[UntCaptain 6]

Tried my first tourism city last night. Everything was looking good until I plopped the bus station, train station, and expo center. My city was immediately invaded by taxis, and now my traffic is a disaster.

So I think I will start over. The key is to put lots of commercial next to the expo/transit center???

That's a good point there, I too started a tourist city using Purrs guide, so far so good (buying all power, water, and sewerage from my other 2 trade towns in my region) I have 2 highway entrance into my city, in a L shape over in 1 corner. I was planning to have my main tourism inside the L and maybe a casino or 2 on the opposite side of the avenue. Then the remaining 1/2 map to be C and R using a brick layout road system.

I had not thought about the mass injection of taxis into my city, is there a way to counter this or to maybe change my road layouts ready for the incoming tourism boom?

[NovaBlazer 10]

Tried my first tourism city last night. Everything was looking good until I plopped the bus station, train station, and expo center. My city was immediately invaded by taxis, and now my traffic is a disaster.

So I think I will start over. The key is to put lots of commercial next to the expo/transit center???

 

The way I got it to work was to put a train station right next to the expo center and the stadium.   I also have a street car stop in front of the two, a bus stop, and two bus depots flanking the stadium and the expo hall.  I also have an airport about 1 block away.    Easily 75% of my traffic now is buses. 

 

However, I do notice that on the far out reach of my city where I have not brought rail and street cars yet, that taxis seem to be all over the commercial business.  Which is fine...  so I moved my casinos near to the expo center and the stadium and all the alternate transportation and they have started to do well... very well!   It seems that the only time I get taxis now is when people want to leave the casino area and travel to the commercial area.   Obviously I need to move the commercial closer or provide alternate transportation to the commercial area.

 

So you might be on to something with your idea of moving commercial closer to your expo hall and stadium to reduce taxi traffic. 

[Grimhood 1]

Yeah I think the tourists want to go shopping. I'll try connecting an avenue with commercial zoning to the expo/bus/train area and see what happens.

[kgpurrs 107]

Tried my first tourism city last night. Everything was looking good until I plopped the bus station, train station, and expo center. My city was immediately invaded by taxis, and now my traffic is a disaster.

So I think I will start over. The key is to put lots of commercial next to the expo/transit center???

You can take a look at my screenshot, the bottom is all medium density low wealth commercial and residential.  Right next to the expo center I have two blocks of high density commercial (the tall buildings).  On the left of the high density is a row of medium density commercial.

 

Don't worry too much about traffic from Taxi this early, but you do have to be knowledgable in road network design, because your shoppers will be going to the expo center as well.  The tourist car traffic uses the avenue connected to the highway, my shoppers don't use this avenue they use the back roads to enter.

[specializedguy 193]

Hey , kgpurrs, have you ever seen the Casino button yellow with the alert, "High tourist demand"? If so, how did you solve this?

[MayorQuimbie 13]

I may be missing something but where do you find your cities "attraction rating"

[specializedguy 193]

I may be missing something but where do you find your cities "attraction rating"

 

I'd like to know as well.

[The Pennsylvania Turnpike 252]

]

]

]

person above me is a fellow Allentowner 

 

 

I always feel like a thief stealing landmarks from big cities at night and putting them in my city. But anyway's great work.

[kgpurrs 107]

Hey , kgpurrs, have you ever seen the Casino button yellow with the alert, "High tourist demand"? If so, how did you solve this?

 

It usually means that you have a high attraction rating, but not enough public transportation (train stations, seaports, and airports) to get all the tourists in your city to max out that attraction rating.

 

 

I may be missing something but where do you find your cities "attraction rating"

 

Click on City Specialization Menu, then Click on Gambling.  Potential Tourists per Hour is attraction rating.  They also have Current Tourists, this is the maximum number of tourists that will enter your city in a day.  When I created this guide, this didn't exist, it was added in some patch.  I was guessing that was how it worked, and I was correct.