How to make tourism profitable in Tropico 4?

Making money from tourism is a real pain in the game. You are better of making industry, however if you really want to do it (for an achievement or the campaign or perhaps just a bit of fun?) there are a few tips I could give you.

  • IMPORTANT, before starting up any tourism, make sure you citizens are happy and you are earning a bit of money from industry or such. Without happy citizens, they can't be happy while serving tourists.

  • Focus on ONE or TWO types of tourists, do not try to please all of them, it will only ruin everything (from my own experience).

  • Make sure you place everything near each other, once you get an airport you do not want it to be on the other side of the island (I assume this would make sense?)

  • It helps to have your workers not to far off, or if they are a bit off always have garages so they can get to their work in the hotels fast.

  • Try to mess around with the costs of your hotels/entertainment structures. Are there no tourists there? Either they can't get there easy enough (garages, or lack of airport(s)/dock(s)), or it might simply be to expensive.

  • Make sure you have fully staffed buildings, no staff means that they tourists can't stay there!

  • Do not cut on costs for maintenance.

  • Only build new hotels/attractions if those you have right now are pretty much filled up, you do not want to waste money on something that's not required!

  • In the end, it's still a bad idea to do tourism if you really want to earn a lot of money in the game. Industry simply beats everything else.

Something to note you might not know about: the entertainment buildings that help both the tropico's and you have a rather strange system. The tourists will actually pay 3x more then the price it would cost your tropican's.


I'm pretty new to Tropico 4, playing the campaign for the first time (did play 1-3 though) and did just finish the third (I think) island where you are told to build tourism business.

My income (at end of the scenario = getting 1,000,000 twits) is $205,055 in total which splits up to

  • Farming $18,464
  • Mining $0
  • Logging $0
  • Industry $0
  • Tourism $138,058 (with one arrow up)
  • General Overhead $34,335 (with one arrow up)
  • Foreign Aid $14,148

I didn't plan in exporting anything, I'm just exporting food because I usually build more ranches than I need as I often leave my people starving later in the game. Concerning tourists, I did focus on the 'Wealthy'-class only building luxury hotels, beach-things (not the bunks, but the bigger ones which offer room for 2 families) and having one skyscraper hotel.

In entertainment / attractions I only use the luxury liner (which gives a lot of revenue, had something like slightly less then $400,000 total at the end), nightclubs, banks, modern art museum, gourmet restaurants, marina and spa, which I are the important ones. I only got 1 cabaret and almost none of the attractions which are listed under attractions and I got everything set on the highest settings to let it fit for the wealthy-class.

For tourist arrival I did have 3 docks and 1 airport in the end.

I did not start with the wealthy-stuff of course. At the start I did build 1 dock (and did only keep 1 for quite some time), one hotel (for free because of the perk) and 5-10 bunks (the small huts for 1 family) and as attraction a scenic spot which is a great money maker for the early and low tourists. The scenic spot (did keep it for the children of the wealthy tourists) had around $120,000 total revenue at the end, so it's good to have in my opinion(1-3 depending on how many tourists you got)

In all (small) free places around hotels / entertainment / attractions I did place parks / trees / fountains which in some cases helps a lot for the beauty-rating if you check the overlay. I'm not sure if it really affects the number / prices for tourists though, I just like my islands beautiful with a lot of small stuff :)

I did not have trouble or lack of money during this scenario. I did play pretty much the same setup on the second mission (where you are meant to build mines which I did not know, so did start with tourist-perks and did stick to it). Did work very well too, but I had 2 iron ore mines on the second island in addition to tourist business.

I think focusing on eco-tourists will work out fine too. They spend a lot in touring houses, balloon rides, maritime (boat tour-mode) and stuff like that. Slobs give me good money in restaurants, pubs and low-level entertainment / attractions in the beginning. Maybe if one does focus on these it will work in the late game too. Might try that on the next island.

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Tropico 4

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