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Tourism is a mechanic by which outside cims come to your city to visit unique buildings , monuments , Parks and Plazas , Park Areas , and spend money in your commercial districts . Tourism can be a substantial source of tax income but can also create traffic problems if not managed correctly.

Tourists can enter a city through many transportation types, but when you start a game, they will have access by the highway only. Tourists will visit all cities, but their numbers are decided by how attractive your city is. City attractiveness is affected by citizen happiness, land value, and unique buildings in the city [1] . The average city attractiveness value is shown in the city info panel and the tourism info view. Land value can be increased by building parks and plazas, which also help zoned buildings in the city to level up. In addition to this, the “Great Maintenance” policy for Airport Areas can increase land value within the boundaries of the airport.

Upon reaching the certain goals and milestones , various unique buildings become available in the menu and you can place them in your city. They are a popular location for many of your citizens, but they also draw in tourists and increases happiness of citizens living near it. It's often a good idea to make sure unique buildings have good public transport connections, so roads around them don't get too busy.

Tourists also come to your city to see sights and shop. This can greatly increase your tax income, because tax is paid for every unit of goods sold. It also means that tourists want to get to your commercial areas and transportation should be designed to make it as easy as possible for them to do so. Tourists can come to the city by ship, airplane, train, intercity bus, the Space Elevator monument, or with their own car. For tourists that come in by means other than their own car, public transport is very important. The better tourists can get around, the more money they tend to spend in your city. The key is to earn and build unique buildings to draw in tourists, and then provide them with good transportation options inside the city to keep them there. Large amounts of tourists can also create traffic jams if they use their own cars instead of public transport, so you can avoid a lot of problems by giving them the means to move around easily.

Tourists also have different wealth values, which is Low, Medium, and High. This can be visible in-game by clicking on the person. The more money they have, the longer they will stay in the city, since they will go to more parks/commercial buildings.

• 1 Exchange Students
• 2.1 Parklife unique buildings
• 3 Tourism Specialization
• 5 References

Exchange Students [ edit | edit source ]

Exchange students are tourists that come to a city to go to a campus area . Increasing a campus area’s reputation level will increase the exchange student bonus, which means that more exchange students will come to your city. The exchange student bonus can be seen in the tourism info view .

Unique Building Effects [ edit | edit source ]

All Unique Buildings attract tourists to varying degrees.

Parklife unique buildings [ edit | edit source ]

The Unique Buildings in the Parklife DLC can each have an additional effect on tourists:

The City Arch must be placed over a road, and it increases the tourist capacity of roads by 5%.

The Clock Tower increases the speed of trains by 20%.

The Old Market Street increases the tax income of nearby commercial zones by 5%.

The Sea Fortress must be built along the shore, and it increases the passenger ship and airport tourist capacity by 5%.

The Observation Tower increases the effect radius of all Parks and Plazas by 10%.

The Statue of Colossalus increases the stay of the tourists in the city by 20%.

Tourism Specialization [ edit | edit source ]

The tourism specialization can help boost tourism. For the Tourism commercial specialization, see Tourism Specialization .

Tours [ edit | edit source ]

Walking and sightseeing bus tours may draw tourists to your city. Place stops next to points of interest for the most effect. If a walking tour is too long, it will be less attractive. The ticket price of sightseeing bus lines may be adjusted in the line details.

References [ edit | edit source ]

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How Cities Skylines Tourism Works

Tourists arrive in your city by different kinds of transport to visit monuments, parks and commercial districts. For you, it’s beneficial because tourists spend money in your city.

The number of tourists is determined by the attractiveness of your city. Thus the more attractive buildings and districts you build, the more tourists arrive in your city.

The most challenging thing about tourism is that having a big number of visitors means having heavy traffic . So your goal is to plan your city in the way that tourists arrive and have all the needed access and don’t trigger jams.

How Tourists Arrive

Let’s focus on the way tourists arrive in your city. At the beginning of the game, they arrive only by car. As time goes by, and you unlock new transportation options, they start arriving by train, plane, ships, and even by space elevator in the late game. 

After arrival, they want to go to the place that attracts them (a unique building, park, or commercial zone). This means they need a proper way of getting there. Sure tourists will choose the fastest transportation option. Thus you need to have public transport that is optimized for delivering big groups of people to points of interest. This is somewhat similar to organizing transport for your citizens with the only difference – the starting point is not a residential zone but an entry point such as an airport, a seaport, a railway station.

How to Handle Cities Skylines Tourist Traffic

There are two main Cities Skylines traffic tips for tourism:

• Establish control over touristic traffic . This means you need to decide where they arrive and where they should go. For example, you can allow only one railway station to accept external traffic. Thanks to this, you will know that the visitors arriving by train will spawn there only. It makes it easier for you to organize proper transportation to the points of interest. Sure such concentrated touristic traffic requires more capacity for your public transport but you’re the one who decides. Also, it’s better to arrange tourist areas by placing unique buildings close to each other to have better control over the traffic.
• Avoid crossing touristic routes with other traffic. If the bus line delivering your citizens from a residential area to industrial uses the same streets as the line for transporting tourists from a seaport to unique buildings then you may get traffic jams . It makes sense to separate these lines when possible.

How to Increase Cities Skylines City Attractiveness

In City Skylines tourism is boosted when you increase city attractiveness. This means you need to build monuments, parks, and specialized commercial zones to get more visitors, that’s the most working Cities Skylines increase tourism strategy. It’s important that different objects have different attractiveness, for example, Eiffel Tower provides 6 while the Gherkin has 12, you can find the full list here .

However, there are several Cities Skylines tourism tips you can use besides that:

City policies . There are several of those which allow you to increase the attractiveness of some districts. By the way, that’s another good thing to control your tourist traffic by boosting attractiveness in defined areas of the city. Here are the policies:

Advertisement Campaign (Parks) – Draws 20% more visitors for ₡200/week.

Boost Connections – Outside connection traffic capacity is increased by 20%. Applies to boats, planes, trains, and private cars. ₡10,000/week

Let Go of Leisure – your Cities Skylines tourism district doesn’t bring money from taxes but attracts much more visitors Recreational Use – Slightly increased tax income. Moderately increased tourism. Slightly reduced the crime rate. +15% Police budget

Prefer Parks – For ₡100 per object, you can attract 10% more tourists to your parks, plazas, and park areas. Build the Castle of Lord Chirpwick provides you with +100 attractiveness for the entire city and each unique building receives +25% attractiveness. Also, it just looks great, especially in a mountain city.

Build a Space Elevator . That’s a great source of visitors which is available in the late game and the first thing you need to do is to create proper transportation options because it will drive lots of tourists to your city.

When solving the how to get more tourists cities skylines issue you should always think about easy access to the points of interest. Tourists should find it simple to arrive in the city, find the right way and spend money in your city. Thus, a good system of hubs and proper public transport routes is a must for getting more tourists.

Where to Place Cities Skylines Tourism District

Tourism districts are among the places that are visited by tourists. This means there are some requirements for placing such districts if you want them to work well:

• Tourism district may be located near the entry point – an airport, intercity bus terminal, railway station or passenger harbor
• Another obvious location is the place where the most of your landmarks are located.
• Areas with high land value such as sea shore, beach and so on.

It’s always important to have proper transport connections and to avoid placing too big zones. Track the usage by tourists and the presence of the workforce in the area before expanding.

Cities Skylines Tourists Buses

Thanks to the Parklife DLC we have some new awesome features.

Tourist buses are pretty similar to regular buses but they’re for transporting tourists between points of interest. Honestly, I failed to create sightseeing tours that transport a lot of tourists. I think that’s because pretty often those lines duplicate routes of regular buses. However, I received some additional traffic jams next to those points of interest.

Cities Skylines Walking Tours and Balloons

Cities Skylines walking tours are pretty similar. You just place stops near points of interest striving not to make the route too long because this affects attractiveness. 

Balloons look really cool and add some festive atmosphere to your city though I can’t say they’re very useful.

Is Tourism Cities Skylines Hassle Worth It?

Sure your city can survive without developed tourism. However, working on this aspect is both interesting and beneficial. Tourism brings a serious amount of money to your budget though can trigger some traffic issues. Anyway, that’s an awesome challenge for those who love this game!

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• Cities: Skylines

Where to place tourism specialization

• Thread starter want_to_know
• Start date May 3, 2020

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want_to_know

• May 3, 2020
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Where is the best place for tourist districts? As a "bridge" from unique buildings to "regular" commercial areas? Or maybe in opposite places where you don't want to have tourist traffic? Or Directly at tourists "entrances" (like Harbor or Airport) or maybe not there, because they are not "attracted" by the rest of the city. I look forward to your suggestions.  

prismaticmarcus

Field marshal.

it doesn't matter enormously as long as they have good access to public transport  

And where does it make a little difference if they have good access to public transport?  

Second Lieutenant

I put mine literally near touristy areas with good transport hub and freeway access. And also near passenger harbors.  

EFGCities said: touristy areas Click to expand...

want_to_know said: What are these to you? Click to expand...

I understand, but that with the hotels that are too high can be done with a little patience when tearing them down. But still, where's the best place for it?  

want_to_know said: I understand, but that with the hotels that are too high can be done with a little patience when tearing them down. But still, where's the best place for it? Click to expand...

Thank you @EFGCities Are there any other suggestions for good locations?  

want_to_know said: Thank you @EFGCities Are there any other suggestions for good locations? Click to expand...

Again, Thank you @EFGCities --- Does anyone have any suggestions for good locations?  

• May 4, 2020

want_to_know said: Again, Thank you @EFGCities --- Does anyone have any suggestions for good locations? Click to expand...

In the tourism overview you can see both what buildings tourists are attracted to, and where they currently are. I tend to place tourism specialization around areas where tourists arrive (harbor, airport), where they go (unique buildings, parklife parks) and where it looks good (beach).  

MarkJohnson

• May 8, 2020

want_to_know said: Where is the best place for tourist districts? As a "bridge" from unique buildings to "regular" commercial areas? Or maybe in opposite places where you don't want to have tourist traffic? Or Directly at tourists "entrances" (like Harbor or Airport) or maybe not there, because they are not "attracted" by the rest of the city. I look forward to your suggestions. Click to expand...

There was never a good war or a bad peace.

For me my tourist area is an island within the city It is connected to the rest of a the city by mass transit only No road connection between my city and the tourist area It has its own airport within the tourist area My "tourist island" is along a river so it has a ferry connection. It has an airport. It has subway, monorail & tram hubs. (In this current city I'm building my trains are for freight only.) Cims can walk to and from the tourist island as I have many footpaths however they can't drive in or out of tourist island Tourists can't get into the city unless they walk from the tourist island along footpaths into the city There is police, fire, hospital, trash all within the tourist trap  

JerkyJerry said: however they can't drive in or out of tourist island Click to expand...

in yet to find a decent application for tourism specialisation. The hotels it spawns are huge towering skyscrapers so look really dumb in some places but have noticed that much smaller buildings spawn when next to water so have started putting them right on the coastlines to get tiki style bars and beach style buildings. Maybe one block back from that I zone leisure so they blend in to all the nightclubs and game it arcades. I’ve never had an issue with abandonment while doing this. I tend to run either monorail or trams between the block of tourist and leisure and gets plenty of use. With new metro links they can pull in loads of tourists direct from the airports and bus stations too.  

want_to_know said: But they do have pocket cars ... Click to expand...

• May 17, 2020

I place the Tourism zones on waterfront. I usually place the Leisure zones near my colleges, stadiums, and other areas that get a decent amount of tourists. The organic markets I try to place close (but not too close) to my residential areas.  

Get more tourists in Cities: Skylines

Last Updated:

Lars Cornelis

Cities: Skylines is a popular city-building game that allows players to create and manage their dream metropolis. One of the most significant aspects of a thriving city is a vibrant tourism industry. In this guide, we will explore how to optimize city tourism in Cities: Skylines to help you create the ultimate destination for visitors from around the world.

Plan Your City Layout

Invest in transportation infrastructure, create a variety of attractions, develop parks and green spaces.

To create an attractive and accessible city for tourists, start by designing a well-planned layout. Designate specific areas for commercial, leisure, and tourist attractions (Commercial specializations for tourism were introduced with the After Dark expansion), and ensure they are easily reachable via various transportation methods.

Efficient transportation is crucial for attracting tourists. Invest in multiple forms of transportation, including bus lines, trams, metros, trains, and ferries. Create dedicated public transportation routes to popular tourist attractions and ensure they connect with different city areas.

Diversify your city’s attractions to cater to different types of tourists. Consider including landmarks, museums, and other entertainment. Unique buildings will draw visitors to your city and keep tourists entertained.

Beautiful parks and green spaces are vital for improving the overall attractiveness of your city. They not only provide recreational opportunities for tourists but also improve the city’s air quality and environment. Invest in large parks, botanical gardens, and nature reserves to offer diverse outdoor experiences.

Optimize City Policies Implement tourist-friendly policies to encourage more visitors. Some policies to consider include:

• Recreational Use: Legalize recreational activities to attract more tourists.
• Free Public Transport: Offer free public transportation to make it easier for tourists to explore the city.
• Tax Breaks: Provide tax incentives to businesses that cater to tourists, encouraging more establishments to cater to visitors.

Optimizing your city for tourism in Cities: Skylines requires careful planning, investment in infrastructure, and a variety of attractions to cater to different types of visitors. By following this guide, you can create a thriving tourist destination that boosts your city’s economy and attractiveness. Remember, a successful city is a well-balanced one, so keep innovating and adapting to the needs of your tourists and residents alike. Happy building!

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Cities Skylines 2 hotels and how to build them for tourists

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Looking to build hotels in Cities Skylines 2 ? While building hotels was straightforward in the previous title, Colossal Order shakes things up in the sequel.

If you’re wondering about what’s changed, check out our elaborate Cities Skylines 2 vs Cities Skylines comparison. And check out if Cities Skylines 2 is on Game Pass to check it out on Microsoft’s service.

How to construct hotels in Cities Skylines 2

Unlock the Tourist Destinations in the Progression menu and then create commercial zones to spawn hotels in Cities Skylines. These come in many types: hostels, lodgings, motels, and full-blown hotels. While I haven’t got them in the high-density commercial zones yet, I expect them to have even higher tiers of hotels for tourists.

Hotels add a sizable chunk of income to your finances, helping you get out of debt in Cities Skylines 2 . And don’t worry if tourism takes a while to kick off. Here’s a guide on how to make money fast in Cities Skylines 2 without resorting to the tourist industry. It’ll take a while to pick up since the tourist attractions are rather costly to build and maintain.

The game also has a handy chart that shows the number of occupied and vacant hotel rooms. This lets you see your tourism stats at a glance. Just remember that attracting tourists isn’t as easy as attracting residents to your city. In addition to keeping your citizens happy, you’ll need to ensure a booming commercial sector in addition to maintaining parks and other attractive spaces.

That covers hotels in Cities Skylines 2. Before you get to hotels, get your basics right. We’ve got a Cities Skylines 2 beginners guide with some helpful information. And if you’re familiar with city builders, consider checking out some Cities Skylines 2 tips and tricks . You can try the game out on PC. As for Cities Skylines 2 on Xbox and PS5 , expect a 2024 launch.

Cities: Skylines 2 - How To Increase Tourism

Want to make your city a tourist destination? Here, you can learn how to increase tourism in Cities: Skylines 2.

Quick Links

What is city attraction, tourist attractions, how to build hotels, how to set up transportation for tourists, tips to increase tourism.

Cities: Skylines 2 is all about making a sprawling and efficient town, but you can also increase its attractiveness to increase the amount of visiting tourists. When your city is still small, you probably won't have too many tourists, but as your city evolves, more will arrive.

Cities: Skylines 2 - How To Deal With Noise Pollution

In this guide, we are going to go over how to increase tourism and attract more tourists to your city. Rather than plopping down a few impressive tourist attractions, you will need to increase attractiveness, which can be done through a few other methods, which we will go over as well.

The attractiveness of your city is basically how nice it is. Certain buildings and structures can boost attraction, which usually affects an area around wherever it is placed. From the Info Views menu, you can check out your city's attractiveness by heading to the Tourism tab (shaped like a blue suitcase).

Here, the total attractiveness of a city is shown, with greener areas being more attractive. On the info panel, you can also see the total number of tourists, weather effects, and the average nightly cost of a hotel.

In the image above, you can see that the example city has a city attractiveness of 55, which is pretty average. Weather doesn't really affect tourism here, and there are around 7,463 tourists that visit each month.

One of the best ways to increase tourism in your city is to build tourist attractions. There are three main attractions, however, if you add your Paradox account, you can also unlock the Medieval Castle , which functions as a tourist attraction.

Below, you can check out the attractiveness of these buildings.

These buildings will become available once you unlock the tourist attraction node of the parks and recreation tree.

Try not to place four main tourist attractions in a residential area; they will draw in tourists, which also means more traffic.

Smaller parks, plazas, and sports fields will generate attraction, but not as much as the designated tourist attractions. These smaller locations are great for neighborhoods, as well as locations around main destinations to add some variation.

Hotels are where your tourists will stay. A city with no hotels won't attract many tourists, as they have nowhere to go.

From the tourism overlay menu, hotels will appear in purple, allowing you to spot them easily.

Rather than building hotels yourself, they will spawn themselves in commercial zones once you unlock the tourist attraction node. This means that already-built commercial zones will not have a hotel within. Fortunately, you can just zone some more commercial zones around a tourist attraction, and hotels will begin to appear.

If your city is lacking in tourists but you have attractions, consider looking at the tourism overlay. You may just need more hotels added to the tourist areas.

If not enough hotels are spawning, consider bulldozing a few non-hotels and see if hotels appear in their place.

Tourism goes hand-in-hand with having a good transportation system . If you do not have a transportation system, some tourists may not be able to reach your city or other attractions that are far away. Let's take a look at outer-city and inner-city transportation.

Outer-City Transportation

Outer-city transportation involve s bringing people from other cities to your own , which can be done via water, air, train, or highway. When you scroll to the borders of the map, you can see arrows that show connecting cities. When placing routes for transportation that connect to the border, you can include the city in the route.

For example, if you have a train running through the map, find where it touches the border. When you connect your own train station to the tracks, you can start the route in your city, and then click on the border icon, which then includes the external city in the route.

You will also be able to do this for buses, boats, and airplanes . To bring in tourists, we suggest setting up an outer-city train route, as well as planes that go to neighboring locations.

Inner-City Transportation

Within the city, you can create a network for transportation. You can place bus, tram, and subway stops in tourist areas if there is a distance between them. With enough public transportation options, tourists will be able to visit multiple locations within the city.

Additionally, local stops can be placed near locations that connect to other cities , such as harbors and airports. Once a tourist lands after traveling from another city by plane, they can just hop on the subway and travel to a tourist area/hotel.

If you are struggling to deal with traffic while planning your public transportation, we suggest focusing on subways. With a subway system underground, you can place the tracks as efficiently as possible without causing any potential traffic jams.

You can change the price of tickets for a transportation route ; lower prices mean that the route is accessible to more people.

So, you know all about tourism, but how do you increase it? Overall, just focus on building tourist attractions and parks while providing enough hotels and transportation. You can also place signature buildings, which provide a variety of effects.

For example, the Streamline Diner shown above gives your city a one percent boost in attractiveness, while the building itself has an attraction of six. Signature buildings are a great way to increase attraction while providing an array of bonuses.

Next: Cities: Skylines 2 - How To Handle Healthcare

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Cities Skylines 2: How to Make Districts

Instead of having your services or policies cover an entire city, you can have them focus on specific areas by breaking them into Districts. This can diversify your metropolis and better tend to the needs of your Cims. Here’s how to make Districts in Cities Skylines 2 .

How to Make Districts in Cities Skylines 2

Currently, Districts don’t have as many features as they do in Cities Skylines . However, they can help with some complaints that pop up from your residents or help you control areas with high traffic, for example. Districts are also great for getting insight into specific areas, telling you how many residents are employed and what their education level is.

You’ll get access to Districts at Milestone 4: Grand Village. Here’s how to make and use them.

Choose an Area for Your District

Once you unlock Districts, the first thing you should do is decide what areas of your city will be made into Districts. While you can make districts any shape you’d like, I typically choose discrete blocks and areas with services to make into neighborhoods or city centers, for example.

The District tool can be found between Zones and Signature Buildings at the bottom of your screen under the Areas option. Forming a district is similar to selecting the area of operation for Specialized Industries like Forestry buildings or a Landfill. These can be any shape you’d like.

• With the tool selected, click on the map where you want to place your first node.
• Then, draw a shape around an area by placing various nodes in succession.
• Connect back to the first node to complete the District.

Assign Services to Each District

While you can create Districts early, I usually wait until my city has expanded enough that I’m starting to get traffic jams or notices about locations waiting for hearses, for example. Then, I start adding Districts to assign my service buildings to operate in a specific area, increasing response time.

The unfortunate part is that you’ll need money to build more schools, fire stations, and other services that are placed near or in the Districts they serve for the sake of efficiency. One solution is to build medium-sized Districts that are more like self-contained boroughs or towns.

Related: How to Make Money in Cities: Skylines 2

Set District Policies

After you create a District, click on a service building, and you have the option to assign it an operating district. Additionally, you can select the View Details option for the district and set policies. These policies range from reducing pollution through Heavy Traffic Bans to increasing revenue by adding Parking Fees for that district.

And that covers how to create Districts in Cities Skylines 2 , as well as the benefits that can come from them. Otherwise, your services can take a long time getting to citizens in emergencies like fires because they have to travel from a long distance. Or they have to handle the entire city with limited resources. From here, check out our CS2 guide hub for more topics like 10 Tips for Beginners or how to fix electricity bottlenecks .