After trying different wage/fee ratios at restaurants, pools, spas, etc., I'm beginning to wonder why I should even bother with tourism at all. With these attractions, income is measured in the tens and hundreds of pesos and require a lot of micromanagement. ...
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What am I doing wrong? Unless I missed it, there's nothing in the manual on how to set fees. In the manual, it says that a Tropican will not spend more than his/her wage. Is that per visit, per month, per year? It doesn't say. Similarly, there is an amount shown that the tourist will spend, but is this per visited attraction, per day (whatever that is) or per vacation? It doesn't say.
I'm sorry to be so critical - Gemega did not comment in this thread on the replies received - but Gemega seemed singularly unimaginative and unworldly.
Tropican tourism is analogous to real world "destination" (vs "day trip") tourism, and therefore it is comprised of the combination of
accommodations plus
attractions. In Tropico, as in the real world, the attractions bring the tourists, but the accommodations make the money. That is, the real profit of the tourism industry comes from the "hotel" rentals and the attractions make the tourists 'happy' during their stay. So Gemega's desperate attempts to make a profit considering only the attractions is naive. He should be happy if they break even.
Although quite a few others have been puzzled by the meaning of the spending limits, the developers apparently expected almost all players to be intuitive or imaginative enough not to need an explicit explanation in words of one syllable. After all the limit exists in a computer game world.
The citizen's spending limit is his wage current as of a visit (technically, entry\assignment to an entertainment building plus each first of a month after) - all wages are monthly.
If the building fee is higher than the person's pay rate, the person will be excluded. That's all the player needs to know; going beyond that is way overthinking the question. The people do not hop from one entertainment building to another. They get their entertainment need recharged in one building and then go on about the rest of their life cycles.
The tourist's spending limit is tested against the monthly fee (room rental) for an accommodation building and against the per visit fee for each attraction building. It seems that logic would indicate that a tourist is not going to visit with only $25 total money in hand for an entire vacation; but might set a personal limit for each building visited.
Again: If the building fee is higher than the tourist's spending limit, the tourist will be excluded. That's all the player needs to know; going beyond that is way overthinking the question. The game world tourists are inflexible creatures; no matter how horny the man is, he will not pay more for the Cabaret than for the Scenic Outlook.
