Souvenir Shops

[suedenim]

With most of the tourist locations, I haven't had too much trouble adjusting prices and other options to maximize profits. It's usually fairly simple - if the facility is always jam-packed, raise prices; if it always seems to be 1/3 full, lower them.  But a few facilities tend to give me fits.  I can't seem to get people to come to the Souvenir Shop no matter what, and the relatively high pay of the shop attendants makes it even harder to turn a profit.  Any tips here?  The Casino gave me some difficulty too, but experimentation tends to help here.

[Reignking]

Those are two are so annoying that I usually skip them, because I don't have enough time to build up a really massive tourism industry.  I like the gourmet restaurant, and spa, and beach...

Sorry, that doesn't help much

[Crandaddy]

I've had the same issues as you.  Sorry, I don't have a solution.  Souvenir shops always bleed money for me, so I've stopped using them.  Even if my price is only $1, I get very few visits to them.  In general, I've found the Tourism industry to be much more of a pain in the arse to build than regular factories--not enough income, too many Tropicans to support it, too much time to build stuff...

[flagator_]

I too find that tourists rarely go there. But I think that has to do with the tourists' tastes rather than any inherent problem with the shops. Take a look at the tourists and you'll see they each have ratings of what they like to do. Shopping is one of them.

Now, we know that tourism rating of the island depends on evaluations of the island by previous visitors. So if people have a good time doing certain activities, like lying on the beach or going to the cabaret, they'll go home and people who also like those things will come; people who don't will stay away. So if you make sure your tourists who like shopping have a quality, fully-staffed souvenir shop when they arrive, future tourists will include more of them who like to shop too, and your shop will turn a profit.

How do you do this? Build your hotel, but keep the maid jobs X'd out until youv'e built and staffed your support businesses, e.g. beach site, scenic overlook, souvenir shop, nightclub and restaurant. Then, and only then, staff the hotel, so your first batch of visitors will go home raving about all the great things there are to do and see on Tropico.

[Steve-S]

In the guide at Gamespot it mentioned that building Hotels w/o any attractions for the touristas is very detrimental to the tourist rating.  What they suggest is to que up all the buildings, hotels etc., and set the priority to full on one & stop build on the others.  When one gets to 90% done or so set it to stop build & let em build on another one.  When they're all around 90% let them complete them all.  They should complete about the same time you'll have a complete tourista paradiso ready for the suc... er touristas.  This way you don't pay any overhead on the buildings that are done while waiting for the others to finish.  So far I've only tried this once & they finished the darn building anyway.  It was at 95% before I cought it though.

Steve-S

[suedenim]

I figured out a little bit in my latest game.  One problem is that the souvenir shop, even with good staffing and the "arts and crafts" option, is a fairly low-quality location.  So tourists will prefer to go to other attractions, unless they have a strong preference for shopping or can't afford the better attractions.  

I wound up having, for most of the game, one of each hotel type.  Eventually I found that I could have the souvenir shop turn a very meager profit by selling T-shirts to the Slob Tourists who were increasingly getting priced out of my better attractions.

My current guess is that the souvenir shop is basically a loss leader.  You might never make a serious profit with it, but it's worth having just to boost the Tourism ratings of tourists who have a strong preference for Shopping.

Incidentally, in my first game really focusing on tourism, I found that it can work quite well as the focus of your economy.  It's *different* from an industry-based economy, but if you manage it right, it can be very lucrative.  I wound up finishing with my highest score yet (something like 839, I think?  Dunno if that's particularly spectacular compared to other players.)

[Sal_]

Possibly the point of the souvinier shop is to raise the overall tourism rating of you island rather than making a profit. One of the points the manual makes about tourist buildings is that variety counts. This kind of goes along with some of the other services, the clinic and church, that are free, these buildings provide a service to your citizens at a cost to you. I think that we should approach the souvinier shop with the same perspective, the shop may lose money, but other attractions my gain more profits as a result. I will have to experiment more on this theory.

Sal

[flagator_]

I decided to test my little theory expounded above, just to see if I knew what I was talking about or was just talking out my ... but anyway, I built a gourmet restaurant, pool, beach site, scenic overlook and, yes, SOUVENIR SHOP before my middle-range hotel. Everything was staffed, I finished the hotel and opened the dock to yachts, the tourists showed up, smiles everybody, smiles. Ran that thing for 25 years on T-Shirts or Arts & Crafts, didn't matter, prices ranging from $25 (if it's expensive will they think it's worth it?) all the way down to $5. Not a SINGLE visitor for the life of the building. That's the last souvenir shop I will ever build.

[suedenim]

Hmm, I think it might just be a simple matter of the shop's Tourism Quality rating and the availability of alternatives.

In the game where I had it squeaking out a small profit, I had one Cheap Hotel, one Medium, one Luxury.  The Cheap Hotel was the first built.  Later on, I wanted to demolish it and put another Medium in its place, but the geography was wrong, so I just kept the Cheap Hotel up and running.  I had a bunch of expensive, high-quality attractions, and the crappy T-Shirt shop, which had a fair number of visitors after I tweaked things.  I suspect it was attractive to the poorer Slob Tourists, because they couldn't afford the better stuff, like the Spa.

Bottom line hypothesis: Perhaps the Souvenir Shop is only a good buy if your tourist economy is mostly Slob Tourists and Cheap Hotels?  Or alternatively, perhaps, it's OK as a loss leader for rich tourists with a particuarly high preference for the Shopping activity?

[Lachrymologist]

I've had some decent traffice at the souviner shop, but it appeals mostly to the lower income bracket (t-shirts) and mid income bracket (arts & crafts).  It also serves as another attraction, which you guys have already mentioned.  I believe the manual says something about for a cheap hotel you need 3 attractions nearby , regular hotel 4 , luxury hotel 5.

I'm amazed that you didn't get any traffic at it FLGator.  This attraction is almost always filled when I've used it.  Have you tried lowering the price?  Positioning it only near your 'cheaper' attractions?  How about right at the docks?

Lach

[flagator_]

It was positioned directly on the road from the docks, right in front of the medium hotel, between it and the beach site. People had to go out of their way to avoid it. And I checked, I did have low-class tourists, and some of them did have Shopping at least at 50 percent. The shop was staffed the whole time, and I ran it for several years near the end with the cost set to $5. So I don't know what these picky people wanted. I have seen people visit the shop before, in other games, but in this game which should have been the ideal case, nothing. Even in the games where it did get visitors it just sucked cash. I don't think it's worth it any more.

[Dreamweaver]

I wonder if the souvenir shop is more like a marketplace than a pub.

A marketplace serves customer instantaneously. Visitors to the pub, on the other hand, lingers in the pub for a couple of months. From the time, pub visitor expresses a desire to visit the pub until he actually visits the pub and leaves, his icon will show up in the pub and he begin paying for pub service. Which is why entertainment based facility can make a bunch of money per tourist. Estimating a travel time of 2 months to get to the pub and 2.5 months at the pub, the tourist would have paid 4.5 months worth of fees.

If the souvenir shop is like a marketplace, the tourist would only pay during the travel time (visitation is instantanous), in that case, you end up with 2 months worth of fee per tourist.

Someone should verify the mechanism.....

[flagator_]

Nope, it doesn't matter. Nobody bothered to go there. I'm talking, Visits This Year: 0, Total Lifetime Visits: 0, Revenue This Year: $0, Total Lifetime Revenue: $0.

I didn't miss anybody.

I'm starting to think the Souvenir Shop is broken. It always seems to have a tourist quality of about 36-39, which won't attract anybody when there's a quality 78 beach site and a quality 89 scenic overlook next door. And that tourist quality NEVER goes up. If anything, it goes down slowly, like housing does. Changing to Arts and Crafts doesn't make it go up; adding staff doesn't raise it; waiting forever for your staff to gain skills doesn't raise it. I'm starting to think it's a bug in the game, that perhaps when the building was made, its base coding was copied from a building that doesn't vary in quality and someone forgot to update the code.

BRENT!!!! Please fix this!    Or at least verify it so we know we're not crazy.

(On the other hand, I love scenic overlooks; they're cheap, fast to build, take only 1 unskilled worker, and if you use a 4-color handout the quality goes to 99!!! Mine are always packed even if I charge $25.)

[El_Coronel]

In one scenario that included tourists (the prison one?) I had a scenario shop that was turning a small profit.  No, I have no idea what I did differently.  I know I was running it on arts & crafts though.

[Mr.Happy]

You guys must be doing something wrong my sovinear shop is my main income store its quilty is 63 and everything else a little higher but is has had 53 vists in one year.

[bear_e]

(On the other hand, I love scenic overlooks; they're cheap, fast to build, take only 1 unskilled worker, and if you use a 4-color handout the quality goes to 99!!! Mine are always packed even if I charge $25.)

likewise for me - i figured out early on that the scenic overlooks were more useful than the souvenir shops. i stopped using souvenir shops after my 3rd-4th game because it didn't seem to make any difference where or how i deployed them, they were always a losing situation.

[Eddy]

I've also abandoned the souvenir shops.  In every game, the beach sites were packed, the scenic outlooks were packed, the spa was busy, the pub had a waiting list, as did the restaurant, but the shopkeepers spend all their days playing canasta.  It is frustrating to see "Lifetime expenses 6,030, lifetime income 15."

[tropico180]

Every time I have built my souvenir it worked out great.I didn't make a huge profit but it raised the tourism rating. You should build one between the slob hotel and the middle-class hotel. Then set it to tshirts and if you have tourists coming in, they'll buy stuff. Put the other one between the luxury hotel and middle class hotel. Then set it to arts & crafts.

Note: If you have a small tourism industry don't use a souvenir shop. This works if you want have a big tourism industry.

[2ninga]

I've never been able to make money off of the souvenir shops either, but the pool is a cash cow.  Moo...

[Ong]

 Well, the most i ever made from a souviner shop in profit was $2000. I was selling arts and crafts at $25 each with only 1 shop keeper whose salary was only $20. It seems to work....

[Admiral_Cigaros]

Dudes and dudettes.....My souvenir shop turned a profit when I put it next to the docks. Now this dock was not to far from my Tozone (Tourist zone). This dock only served yachts(incidentdently staffed by 1 dockman) and the souvenir shop was the last and clear outpost before tourist departure. It turned a profit,but no more than a middle of the road restaurant. I use it to squeeze the LAST spending dollars out of the tourists before they left my beautiful island. MY DAD WENT TO TROPICO AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT!

[Arenji]

yeah,I hate souvernir shops, and casinos. dadgumed dadgumed dadgumed,I`m a comunnist

[viper2317]

On a somewhat related note, does anyone here use bungalows?  I've made a great profit using them, they build really quickly, and only require one uneducated (I think) worker.  Also, since everyone is talking about placing the souvenir shop near the slob hotel, would it possibly make money if it were placed near a group of bungalows?

Just my two cents.

~viper2317

[eppme]

All tourist attractions are based on how close to the "tourist traffic" they are.  The tourist traffic comes from your yacht docks and your airport.  Place any tourist attraction, entertainment venue, or marketplace right in the middle of the traffic and watch it have full occupancy until you tear it down.

My souvenier shop is at 30 pesos and always has 7-10 people in it, it is right next to my airport.

[AlStar]

quote:

Ong: whose salary was only $20

How can you possibly afford to pay your uneducated workers $20 a month? I've found that if I ever pay my uneducated hordes anything about about $13 or $14 I will rather quickly go from +$200,000 to $0.

Oh, and I've also stopped using shops - I could never make a profit wiht them. On the other hand, having 2 or 3 beaches, all full, all charging $25 or $30 will really rake in the cash.