Rich Presidente, Poor Presidente (Extensive Economic Research)

[Coffeebean]

So am I to take it that the $50 hotel strategy, is really not worth the effort?

No ... it's very much worth the effort. It's arguably a 'bend the rules a little bit' strategic approach, but can work very successfully if applied correctly.

Can someone just take me through how to apply this correctly? Please?

[Senor Ruina]

Eddy has it right.

(1) build a hotel; any hotel.  Cheap is fine.  You may also need to build at least one entertainment; I am not sure.  I had only a pub when I tested.

(2) Set the rates really low, either to $5 or something like that, or use auto-rate for 90% occupancy.

Result: lots of tourists (you don't care about the type) show up and fill the hotel up.  Filled!  Most or all slots taken.

(3) As soon as each yacht arrives, pause the game.  Go to each hotel you have.  If it is full or near full, raise the rate to $50.  If it is near empty, drop the rate to $5 or whatever.

(4) Watch money roll in.

The reason it works is that tourists "decide" to come to the island based on the hotel prices when they (the tourists) are generated -- which is probably at the moment the boat docks.  Tourists don't/can't leave when you raise the rate on them, so you get the occupancy rate of $5 rooms with the income of $50 rooms.  

Well, you don't get quite the occupancy rate of real $5 rooms, since it takes a while for the tourists to "notice" they are being robbed and leave.  And you don't get quite the income of $50 rooms since you lose some of that while you are building up tourists while the rate is low.  So it might be more like occupancy of $20 rooms with income of $40, or something like that.  It is still a huge... um... scam.

Caveat: I think it's a cheap.  So I only tested with one hotel.  I don't know if tourists can move from one hotel to another, in which case, you will have to synchronize rates island-wide.  I don't think they move, though, so you can do it piecewise.

[Senor Ruina]

Update: after more testing, here's how to do it.

When a ship is just about to dock, pause.  Go to one of your hotels of each type, and shift-set the price to zero.  (Thus all your hotels will be at zero price.)  Let the boat dock.  Pause.  Set the price back to 50.  Prices only seem to be checked when the boat docks.  

If you only have a few hotels, then you don't need to build any entertainment for tourists.  The turnover with the yachts you get is enough to keep the hotels full.  Once I got up to maybe 5 or 6 hotels I noticed that there were vacancies.  I accidentally let one boat dock without dropping the prices, and lost a lot of tourists.  I had a hard time recovering from that.

[Egg]

  Well if you look carefully to the second posts i've made, it would state that this $50 hotel trick does not work on cheapo tourists... Heres another fact for you newbies out there.... you can't survive on cheap tourists only... you either have cheap tourism and a industry

  OR

  Middle class tourism/High class tourism... i usally take the middle class and when i have enough money i demolish the med hotels for lux hotels....

  It is already explained that it doesn't work coz they run away and spend less....... Heres a challenge... try to play using tourism on "Plain ridiculous" Economic mode. The last and hardest setting... Tourists bring as little as $3!! ....

[Senor Ruina]

Egg, the cheat does work quite well on cheap tourists.  

Try it.  Two cheap hotels can jumpstart any economy.

Having done it a bit more over the weekend it does seem that tourists can leave the island without a boat.  But it takes them a long time.  It is the cheap ones that seem to leave fastest.  Other than that I don't see any difference between cheap tourists and rich ones, from the POV of this exploit.

[Senor Ruina]

I bet the leaving thoughts are not "I can't believe I stayed in this dump for three years at $50 a night with nothing to do!".

It's good to know they can leave, though.  Still, they are much too exploitable and I continue to regard this as cheating.  

Still... I wonder if building the tourists some attractions would hold them on the island longer to exploit better?

Must... test....

[Egg]

  They'll leave faster, but the rich guys will stay as per normal. It is true, this form of exploit can jump start any economy, but it won't work forever. Eventually you'll have to upgrade to rich tourists........

[Coffeebean]

Hmmmmmmmmm - this is an interesting strategy, I will have to try it out. Thanks for the explanation.
You do have to keep an eye out for approaching yatchs though. Knowing me I'd be watching a teamster trying to find his way to where ever he was supposed to be going or my construction workers slow progress and would miss the boat!

[Eddy]

Poor bean, missing the boat.  
 

[Tom]

Egg, in your first post you wrote "DO NOT BUILD 2 OF THE SAME ATTRACTIONS".  I think (just think) that's it is better to buil more. I always buil for example two or more pools. 1 for slob-tourists and with a cheap fee and one fore the rich tourists with a higher fee. When you set the qualitylevel in the high class pool to 'high' (or whatever it is called) the rich tourists love to come to that pool.

[Brf]

I tried this trick with the Worst Case scenerio, where you set your difficulty level to the maximum of 1928.
I started out with the free hotel. Once it was staffed, it was almost 100% filled with tourists the entire 10 years.  Each time a yacht came by I dropped the rate to 1, and raised it to 50 after the yacht left and generated tons of cash.

[Egg]

To Tom: Yes, you are right, you can build 2 of the same attraction. I am not saying you cannot, but it is not advisable. In your case, you probaly have slob tourists and rich tourists so it is fine to build 2 to cater to differnt classes. Probaly this might happen during a transistion period when changing from slob to rich tourism but usually i save enough money to demolish and build luxury hotels all at once without having a mix of any 2 classes.

 -Welcome to the Cafe

[Egg]

  Heres an interesting ehh scam you can try out. Its been done...not so effective but it works.

Okay i start off with a cheap hotel and a marina. I set the hotel to about $5-$10 and soon a stream out tourists come in. Then my marina is set to free and then it is totally filled. Then moment the boat sets off into the sea, i jack up the prices to $50, then i pause the game, turn on the map editor and creat this really huge ditch in the sea and paint some land around so the boat is stuck. Now they are stuck there for life!

LOL And now the money just keeps on streaming in for life!

[MartialLawForAllHa]

ill send some of my military over to make sure he has tropico installed

 

resistence is FUTILE!! lol