Placing a hotel does not create a tourist destination. A working destination is a hotel with staff, a route the client accepts, route points placed on reachable terrain, the selected theme’s requirements, and an eligible Bourgeoisie visitor. This matters beyond income or decoration: Town to City 1.0 added a tourist-destination condition to the final two city-stage upgrades.
This guide is bounded to v1.0.4 on August 23, 2026. Official patches v1.0.2 and v1.0.3 changed route points, hotel movement, route feedback, route length, theme acceptance, worker behavior, tutorials, and several failure states. Older tourism advice may identify the right menu while diagnosing the wrong client.
Decide whether you need a progression destination or a showcase district
For campaign progress, start with one small route that the upgrade panel recognizes. For a showcase district, you can later optimize scenery, multiple hotels, route themes, and landmarks. Mixing those goals at the beginning makes troubleshooting difficult: if a huge resort fails, you do not know whether the problem is the hotel, the route, the theme, the destination, staffing, or visitor eligibility.
Write a one-route contract before building:
- hotel type available in the current research tree;
- the Bourgeoisie city expected to supply visitors;
- the landmark, ruin, marketplace, nature area, or other destination required by the selected route theme;
- a road corridor that can accept reachable route points;
- the workers you can assign without breaking an essential service;
- the exact upgrade-panel or hotel readback that will count as success.
If the late campaign is the reason you are here, keep the settlement stage roadmap open beside this guide. The stage panel tells you whether the destination has satisfied the gate; the hotel menu tells you why it has not.
Choose an Inn, Boutique Hotel, or Grande Hotel for the route you can prove
The official 1.0 changelog names three hotel types: Inn, Boutique Hotel, and Grande Hotel. Do not infer a universal “best” hotel from size. Choose the one your current research, district space, worker supply, and intended route can support.
| Planning constraint | What to inspect before placement | Why it changes the choice |
|---|---|---|
| Space | Hotel footprint plus room to edit the first route point | A larger building can trap its route start against water, a cliff, or another building |
| Workers | Eligible labour available after essential city services remain staffed | An impressive empty hotel is not an operating destination |
| Theme corridor | The decorations, nature, marketplace, shoreline, or landmark conditions visible in the selected theme | The route is evaluated along a path, not just at the hotel door |
| Visitor origin | Which other city has eligible Bourgeoisie | Campaign tourism connects towns; local population alone may not prove a visitor flow |
| Progression goal | The exact late-stage destination line | A minimal recognized route can unlock progress before a resort is expanded |
Place the first hotel where two paths are possible: a clean service road for the district and a legible tourist corridor for route editing. They may share segments, but leave space to decorate and move route points without colliding with normal logistics.
Create the route from the hotel outward
Open the hotel, add a route, and choose a theme available in the current client. Then add route points one at a time. After each point, check the valid/invalid feedback before placing the next. The route should form a deliberate path from the hotel through the required environment to a destination.
- Staff the hotel and confirm its worker state.
- Create one route and select one theme.
- Place the first point on a clearly reachable road near the hotel.
- Add a second point along the intended corridor.
- Read the theme requirement and route feedback.
- Add or reposition the matching scenery or destination element.
- Extend the route only while every existing point remains valid.
- Save the route and check the hotel plus campaign upgrade readbacks.
Do not draw the entire loop before looking at feedback. When the first invalid point is buried among ten valid ones, every later edit becomes ambiguous. A two-point route is an instrument; a twenty-point route is a design project.
Reachability and theme score are separate
A route point can be physically invalid even when the surrounding district matches the theme. Conversely, every point can be reachable while the route still lacks enough of the selected theme’s required objects. Inspect both signals. Moving a route point cannot create a missing landmark, and adding trees cannot make a point on water or a building reachable.
Use patch-specific signals instead of old workarounds
Official v1.0.2 fixed several route-editor problems and added clearer checks:
- route points could previously be placed out of bounds, on cliffs, farm fields, bridges, water, or buildings;
- points could duplicate;
- the button for the first point could disappear after all points were deleted;
- moving a hotel could leave the route start behind;
- the client added icons to unreachable points;
- the patch added audio and extra visual feedback while expanding hotels and editing points.
If a current point is marked unreachable, move it to a road segment the route can traverse. Do not use an old workaround that relies on placing points through cliffs or water; those placements were explicitly corrected. If the first-point control is missing on an older build, update before repeatedly deleting and recreating the hotel.
When a hotel has been moved, reopen the route and confirm that its start moved with the building. On v1.0.2 or later this should be the corrected behavior. If the start remains behind on a current build, preserve the save and capture the before/after location as a reproducible fault.
Read a route theme as a checklist, not a decoration suggestion
The route editor shows what the selected theme accepts. Build to that live list. Version 1.0.3 specifically changed the marketplace stroll route to accept nature decorations, and it lengthened the maximum distance of all hotel routes. An older guide can therefore be too strict about accepted decoration or too conservative about length.
Use three passes:
- Validity pass: every point lies on a reachable path.
- Theme pass: the corridor contains objects accepted by the current theme, placed where the route evaluates them.
- Destination pass: the route reaches the landmark or experience that makes it useful to tourists and the campaign gate.
Add one category of scenery at a time and observe the route readback. If nature raises a current marketplace-stroll score, keep it; if it does nothing, check whether the objects are inside the route’s evaluated area or whether the selected theme expects a different category. Do not publish or follow a fixed score copied from another save. The live editor is precise and patchable.
Keep supply buildings and warehouses from blocking the scenic corridor, but do not make the tourist district nonfunctional to preserve a photograph. Hotels and supporting residents still need valid roads, workers, and city services.
Rocemarée begins with two ruins, not with a blank-grid plan
The official 1.0 notes add Rocemarée as a seaside campaign map with two monumental ruins and new house styles. Treat those ruins as anchors. Before painting roads, locate the hotel area, both ruins, water, cliffs, and the route corridors that can connect them without invalid points.
Plan at two scales:
- City scale: where workers live, how services reach hotels, and which other city supplies eligible Bourgeoisie.
- Route scale: how a visitor travels from one hotel through a theme corridor to one ruin, monument, marketplace, nature area, or shoreline destination.
Do not flatten or surround a ruin before confirming the route-point path. Terraforming and decorative freedom make the map flexible, but the route still needs reachable points. Preserve a simple road approach to each anchor, prove one route, and expand the scenery afterward.
The 1.0 update also adds the Lighthouse and Obelisk. Use a monument as an intentional destination when the current route/theme supports it; do not assume that placing either monument automatically satisfies every tourism condition. The hotel and upgrade panel must recognize the result.
Eligible Bourgeoisie and hotel workers are two different populations
Version 1.0 allows Bourgeoisie to work in the Art Atelier and City Hall. Tourism also moves Bourgeoisie between towns as visitors. A person assigned to a city job is not automatically a hotel employee or a guest, and a large local Bourgeoisie population does not prove that another city can send tourists to the destination.
Version 1.0.3 added explanations for making Bourgeoisie employable when first interacting with the Art Atelier or Departments. Use those tutorials for job eligibility. In the hotel, use the guest-origin readback introduced by the same patch to see which city the Bourgeoisie occupying guest spots came from.
When a hotel has no visitors:
- confirm the hotel itself has the required worker;
- confirm the route is valid and meets its current threshold;
- check whether another campaign city has eligible Bourgeoisie;
- read the hotel guest-origin display rather than inferring traffic from population totals;
- check whether a late-stage city is trying to use itself as its own tourist source.
Version 1.0.2 corrected a case where Belvau residents could occupy visitor opportunities in their home city and prevent people from other towns from reaching those destinations. On a current build, do not design around that old behavior.
Recheck staff after changing a live route
Route edits can change whether a hotel meets its requirement. Version 1.0.3 fixed cases where hotel employees were not being fired when the route score fell below the required amount. The safe operational assumption is that a route which drops below its threshold can change staffing.
Before editing a working route, note its worker and guest state. Make one route change, then inspect:
- point validity;
- theme progress;
- hotel worker assignment;
- guest spots and origin;
- the campaign tourist-destination line.
If a worker disappears after the route becomes invalid, restore the route threshold first, then reassign labour. Adding the worker repeatedly while the route remains below requirement treats the consequence rather than the cause.
Diagnose the route by the first false readback
| False readback | What it excludes | Next action |
|---|---|---|
| Hotel not staffed | Route scenery is not yet the first blocker | Assign an eligible worker without stripping essential city service |
| Point marked unreachable | More theme decoration cannot fix the point | Move it to a valid road or reachable terrain |
| All points valid, theme below requirement | Basic pathfinding works | Add a current accepted object inside the evaluated corridor |
| Route meets theme, no guest origin shown | The remaining question is visitor eligibility or supply | Check other-city Bourgeoisie and hotel worker/guest slots |
| Hotel operates, campaign line stays red | A placed and active hotel is not the full gate | Compare the exact destination requirement and eligible Bourgeoisie |
| Route editor freezes or shows stale points | Do not assume a scoring failure | Record the build, save, hotel, theme, and first failing edit before reloading |
If the city cannot spare hotel labour, or families have stopped arriving, repair the underlying city with the happiness, worker, and warehouse recovery tree. Tourism adds a destination system; it does not erase shortages in the town that operates it.
Expand only after one route survives a save-and-load test
A proven tourism unit is one hotel, one route, one theme, one destination, a known worker state, a known guest origin, and a campaign readback. Save the game, reload it, and recheck all seven. Only then duplicate the pattern or add a second theme.
Expansion should answer a specific question: another origin city needs a destination, the current hotel has a measured guest constraint, a second landmark deserves a separate route, or the campaign requests a new route experience. It should not be a reaction to an unexplained red icon on the first hotel.
When two routes share a corridor, edit one at a time and note which hotel owns each point. Decorative changes can help both, but worker, theme, and guest readbacks remain hotel-specific. Keep route names or visual corridors distinct enough that a failed requirement can be traced back to its owner.
Version notes that should change your route
The official Steam page establishes tourism, connected towns, campaign and sandbox modes, citizen management, and the current Windows release. Official announcements are the primary rules boundary:
- 1.0: Rocemarée, two monumental ruins, Inn/Boutique Hotel/Grande Hotel, tourist routes, Art Atelier, City Hall departments, Lighthouse, Obelisk, and the late-stage tourist-destination gate.
- v1.0.2: major route-point validity, route-start, hotel, guest, feedback, and request fixes.
- v1.0.3: longer route limits, nature decoration for marketplace stroll, clearer route creation, hotel guest origins, tutorial revisions, optimization, and route/staff fixes.
- v1.0.4: no new tourism rule, but construction decorations were added to the tourism research menu; the patch also fixed saved house/shop connection preferences.
The supplied third-party tourism guide was readable and used for player-question coverage, but official patch notes overrule it where they are more recent. The current client decides accepted route points, theme objects, thresholds, guest eligibility, and destination recognition. No permanent route score, hotel capacity, price, tourist rate, or universal “best route” is claimed.