Idea for a concept: Popularity, Influencers and PR

[scenic juniper]

Hi guys,

Just sharing my thoughts on something I think could be great for this game. It’s a long wall of text, so apologies for that!

Part 1:

The hotel industry and social media are heavily interconnected. Reviews, recommendations, influencers, and online reputation can make or break a hotel.

From a gameplay perspective, it doesn’t really feel like this is the case in Hotel Architect right now. Guests leave reviews, but rooms seem to get booked as long as the requirements for a guest tier are met.

As a result, I rarely see empty rooms.

For example, imagine you’ve built a beautiful 4-star hotel. The rooms are spotless. The staff are highly trained. The restaurant serves lobster. Critics are impressed.

Occupancy: 12%.

Meanwhile, across town, a questionable 2-star motel with a flickering sign, suspicious carpet, and a vending machine that hasn’t worked since 1998 is completely sold out because guests won’t stop recommending it.

That kind of situation feels believable, interesting, and creates a story for the player.

I think the game could benefit from a second axis alongside the existing Star Rating system.

The current Star Rating system is great and should remain as it is. Critics determine stars, which determine prestige and which guest tiers can stay at your hotel.

The second axis would be Popularity.

Popularity would represent how attractive your hotel is to potential guests. Each guest tier would have its own popularity rating. For example, a hotel might be very popular with Backpackers but unpopular with Business Guests.

Popularity would be expressed as a percentage and determine the likelihood of a room being booked. A popularity rating of 80% would mean there is an 80% chance that a room for that guest tier gets booked.

Popularity would primarily be driven by guest reviews. Every guest already leaves a review, so this system could build upon mechanics that already exist in the game. To make things more dynamic, I would introduce Influencers.

Part 2

Influencers would function similarly to critics, except they affect popularity rather than stars. Their reviews would carry the weight of multiple guest reviews and create temporary popularity boosts or drops. They would also be harder to satisfy than regular guests.

A positive influencer review could temporarily increase popularity, while a negative review could significantly reduce it.

Some influencers may also arrive with additional requirements. Popular influencers could require extra rooms for camera operators, managers, or assistants.

Nothing says “free publicity” quite like sacrificing three luxury rooms so someone can photograph breakfast from seven different angles.

Most influencers would arrive unannounced, encouraging players to consistently maintain high standards rather than preparing only for inspections.

This could also introduce a new staff role: the PR Manager.

A trained PR Manager could occasionally warn players about upcoming influencer visits, giving them time to prepare.

They could also:

• Organize promotional events
• Boost the impact of positive publicity
• Reduce the impact of negative publicity
• Launch marketing campaigns
• Help attract influencer visits
• Improve recovery after a public relations disaster

In other words, a PR Manager can’t make a bad hotel good.

But they can make sure a good hotel actually gets noticed.

And if an influencer gets trapped in a broken elevator for three hours, they can at least try to convince the internet that it was an “exclusive immersive experience.”

This would create two distinct management challenges:

• Build a hotel worthy of stars.
• Build a hotel people actually want to visit.

[dense mist]

That’s actually perfect, so then there would be more parts to having a full hotel, if your new you won’t be flooded with people checking in, so the better the hotel the more popular. Actually perfect best idea I have heard

[scenic juniper]

Yes, that’s exactly the idea!

Popularity is based on guest reviews. So the better your guest experience, the higher your popularity rate and thus your booking rates and, eventually, income.

For the chaotic part (which I really like in Hotel Architect), influencers could spice things up with (un)announced visits, giving (un)expected judgements that heavily influence your popularity rate.

Imagine yourself running your quiet 2 star hotel with 60% popularity rate. Not all your rooms get booked, but you manage and can slowly expand.

Suddenly a Sportie Influencer named “Cardio Claudia” walks into your hotel. Having the time of her life, she leaves your hotel a wonderful review, boosting your popularity rate for sporties instantly to 90%.

What do you do? Do you expand now that your popularity rate for sporties is high? There’s a risk of spending a lot of money on empty rooms if your popularity rate drops once Claudia’s effect wears off. But there’s a reward of making a lot of money on all those new full rooms.

I imagine you could also use your high popularity rate to bump up the price of your rooms. This would result in a lower popularity rating, because things are too expensive. The same principle applies on lowering room prices to increase popularity.

[dense mist]

So perfect

[lament veldt]

Reading about your idea for a popularity mechanic, it reminded me of GoodGame Cafe (RIP), if you had no food displayed, less and less clients would come, while if you had a lot of food for a lot of time, your rating would increase until you have an absurd amount of people stuck at the door waiting for a table hehehe. I loved it! Love your ideia for Hotel Architec too!! It fits perfectly without overwhelming the game until it becomes planet zoo