You lease the Rheinblick Guest Hotel in Leverkusen: ten rooms, six with an en-suite bathroom, four sharing a bathroom on the landing. The landlord takes no fixed rent but 20 % of your turnover — he wants the house full. The deposit of 2,500 € comes back when you leave.
A hotel is not a big apartment. In the apartment game you click every single enquiry. Here you set prices per room type and per night — fourteen nights ahead — and the bookings arrive on their own. Your work is the rule, not the individual guest. In exchange you get things the apartment does not have: a daily rhythm with a real bottleneck in the afternoon, staff on running salaries, and stars that do not come from guests but from an inspection body.
One night takes 35 real minutes. A real day therefore holds a good 41 hotel nights — even when you are not watching. A game week is 4 hours 5 minutes, a game year almost nine real days. Everything is play money; nothing can be bought or paid out.
Measured, the house earns about 470 € per real day on day one. Opening greedily instead (roughly 50 % above market rate) yields only 256 € — almost half as much, with a half-empty house.
The 📅 Bookings tab shows the next 14 nights across and the room types down. Each cell shows your price and how many rooms are already sold for that night. The colour tells you whether sales are on the usual build-up:
| Colour | Meaning | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| green | on plan | nothing |
| yellow | behind plan | watch it |
| red | far behind plan | lower the price |
| blue | sold out | raise the price — you were too cheap |
Why nothing sells out instantly: not all bookings for a night arrive on the same day. Fourteen days ahead only 2 % are in; the day before, 14 % arrive at once. A night twelve days out at 5 % occupancy is normal; the same figure for the day after tomorrow is an alarm. That is exactly what the colour shows.
Tap a cell to set its price. The dialog works out how many enquiries to expect at that price — and how many at market rate. You can set the price for that one night or for all fourteen at once.
Base rates below decide the price a new night enters the board with. From level 7 you can add a weekend surcharge for Friday and Saturday.
Every room type has a market rate. It rises with your stars. Charge more and demand falls; charge less and it rises. The range runs from −35 % to +120 %.
Measured, the best result sits just above the market rate (about +5 %) at roughly 57 % occupancy. It gets worse in both directions:
| Price | Occupancy | Result per real day |
|---|---|---|
| −20 % | 71 % | 2,705 € |
| market rate | 62 % | 3,486 € |
| +20 % | 51 % | 3,347 € |
| +40 % | 40 % | 2,577 € |
| +80 % | 22 % | −192 € |
When an event comes (trade fair, concert, congress) demand rises — the price does not rise by itself. Do nothing and you sell the same rooms at the old rate and give money away. That is exactly why the event is announced in advance.
Four room types:
| Type | Market rate* | Furnishing | Cleaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🚿 Shared-bathroom room | 38 € | 560 € | 24 game min |
| 🛏️ Single room | 41 € | 520 € | 20 game min |
| 🛏️ Standard double | 52 € | 690 € | 25 game min |
| ✨ Comfort double | 67 € | 1,180 € | 27 game min |
* without stars. With three stars the market rate is about 39 % higher (standard double then 72 €).
⚠️ The most important non-obvious truth of this game: demand does not depend on how many rooms you have. The same demand means 80 % occupancy with 3 rooms and 24 % with 10. Every new room first pushes occupancy down — until awareness has caught up. An extra room only pays off if you had to decline bookings before. The booking board and the Rooms tab tell you exactly that.
Installing a bathroom (2,400 € per room): the first big savings target. Two stars require a bathroom in every room offered for sale — without renovation you never get past one star. Measured, renovating all four shared-bathroom rooms — including the two stars they make possible — brings about +2,100 € per real day.
Blocking a room: a blocked room only costs 0.80 € instead of 7.00 € in fixed costs per night — but earns nothing either.
A hotel day has a rhythm, and it drives the decision you make most often:
| Time (game time) | What happens |
|---|---|
| until 11:00 | check-out wave |
| 11:00–15:00 | cleaning window — everything must be done here |
| from 15:00 | check-in wave |
| 6:30–10:00 | breakfast |
The cleaning clock on the front-desk page shows as a ring when all rooms are ready. If the blue arc runs past the 15:00 mark it turns red:
| Delay | Consequence |
|---|---|
| up to 30 game min | nothing — guests arrive spread out |
| 30–120 game min | guests wait, staff sub-score −0.8 |
| over 120 game min | sub-score −2.0 and complaints |
The arithmetic behind it is simple: a departing room needs 20–27 game minutes of full cleaning, a staying room 12 minutes of refreshing. One staff hour delivers 51 usable game minutes (15 % goes on walking about). And tomorrow's departures are already known today — so you can plan. Failing to plan is punished, but never a surprise.
You set two sliders; the house splits the hours between reception, kitchen and cleaning by itself.
| Permanent staff | Casual staff | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost per hour | 12.60 € | 17.00 € |
| Runs when empty | yes — that is the point | no |
| Hiring fee | one month's salary | none |
| Notice | one game week (both ways) | none |
Your own work is free. You live in the house and deliver 2 hours of cleaning per night plus eleven of the fourteen required reception hours. That is exactly why a guesthouse gets by with so few staff — and why your staff ratio sits at roughly 12–20 % instead of the 30–35 % usual in real hotels. That is no management achievement.
The suggested requirement sits above the sliders free of charge and tells you in plain words how many hours would be needed. It takes the arithmetic off you, not the decision.
The contract cleaners Weißwerk Rheinland (from level 5) clean at short notice for 34 € per room. They are deliberately expensive — one of your own hours does the same for about 6 €. They are meant for the day you miscalculated, not for permanent use.
The emergency brake kicks in when the till runs low: first marketing and maintenance go to zero, then casual staff is cancelled, and in the worst case permanent hours are terminated. No debt is ever created, and the damage is always repairable.
This is the biggest difference to the apartment game. There are two completely separate numbers:
Almost all criteria are staff hours or investments:
| Level | Requires | Willingness to pay | Visibility |
|---|---|---|---|
| ★ | three furnished rooms, daily cleaning without backlog | ×0.84 | ×0.98 |
| ★★ | bathroom in every room, breakfast, drinks in-house | ×0.94 | ×1.04 |
| ★★★ | 3 paid reception hours, TV and internet, buffet, card payment, seating | ×1.06 | ×1.14 |
Is the third star worth it? Measured: yes, but narrowly. On a fully built house it brings about +890 € per real day and pays back the 6,650 € of fees and improvements after roughly seven real days. That is exactly the kind of decision you actually have to work out.
Four and five stars do not exist here. They require a restaurant, lobby, lift and spa — improvements this version does not have yet. They are deliberately kept out of the catalogue rather than listed as empty promises.
Re-inspection: the classification is valid for five game years. Drop a criterion in the meantime (cut those reception hours!) and you lose the star at the re-inspection — not immediately.
Breakfast is the second line of business:
| Offer | Cost of goods | Price | Take-up | Kitchen |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| simple | 2.60 € | 12 € | 55 % | 2 hr per 20 guests |
| buffet | 3.20 € | 15 € | 70 % | 3 hr per 20 guests |
If the kitchen hours are short, take-up falls and so does the breakfast sub-score. The buffet needs the breakfast kitchen (4,500 €) and is a three-star criterion.
Zimmerfinder is the big commission portal: 17 % on every booking from there. You can switch it off — do not. Measured, occupancy then falls from 57 % to 21 % and the house goes into the red. With ten rooms direct sales alone cannot carry it; that channel grows with awareness and score and reaches around 35 % of bookings when fully built.
Maintenance (4 % of turnover recommended) keeps the building in shape. Below 50 % condition the sub-scores suffer. Marketing (from level 3, 2 % recommended) raises awareness and with it demand.
The landlord takes 20 % of your total turnover — rooms and breakfast alike. No minimum rent: an empty house pays nothing. In exchange the rent grows with every success. Measured:
| Build-out | Turnover per night | Rent per night | Rent per real day |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3 rooms, no stars | 146 € | 29 € | 1,197 € |
| 6 rooms, ★★ | 410 € | 82 € | 3,374 € |
| 10 rooms, ★★ | 503 € | 101 € | 4,142 € |
| 10 rooms, ★★★ | 622 € | 124 € | 5,121 € |
From level 8 the landlord grants you a right of first refusal: 22,000 € for the house and the land. Your deposit of 2,500 € is refunded in the process, so you put down 19,500 €. From the next night the turnover rent is gone for good.
What arrives instead: as the owner you carry property tax and building insurance — 7.50 € per night (2,737.50 € per game year). Those fall due even when no room is occupied; the rent would have been zero in that case. For a house that actually runs it is still a very good deal.
When it pays for itself (19,500 € divided by the rent saved minus those 7.50 €):
| Build-out | Saved per night | paid off after |
|---|---|---|
| 3 rooms, no stars | 21.60 € | 527 real hours (22 days) |
| 6 rooms, ★★ | 74.51 € | 153 real hours (6.4 days) |
| 10 rooms, ★★ | 93.17 € | 122 real hours (5.1 days) |
| 10 rooms, ★★★ | 116.96 € | 97 real hours (4.0 days) |
That sets the order: build first, buy second. Buy with three rooms and you wait almost a month for your money; buy with ten rooms and it is back within five days. The game does the sum for your own case in the 🍳 Operations tab — not from this table, but from the rent your house really paid over the last seven nights.
⚠️ Do not put down your last euro. If your till drops below seven nights of fixed costs after the purchase, the emergency brake switches off maintenance and marketing. The purchase dialogue warns you and names the amount you had better have together.
What an owner may do on top: touch the fabric of the building. A full refurbishment lifts the condition to 100 % in one go, at 250 € per percentage point. Through the running maintenance budget the same jump costs 450 € per point and takes weeks. A leased house is off limits structurally — which is why the button only appears after the purchase.
And: the house you bought is a fixed asset of your business. Delete the save slot and it counts at its current value — a building loses only 5 % in the first and 3 % in each further game year and never falls below 60 % of the purchase price. A run-down house is worth less, though: the condition feeds into the valuation.
The house keeps running — night by night, with exactly the same arithmetic as when you watch. The clock you see ticking is display only; an open tab earns not one cent more.
After 8 real hours without you the house switches to reduced mode: prices are no longer maintained and occupancy falls to 60 % of what would have been possible. When you come back you get a report with cause and suggestion — not just figures.
⚠️ The iron rule: being away costs opportunities, never substance. No debt is created, nothing expires, no room breaks because you were gone for two days. Stay away for two weeks and you find a smaller but healthy hotel — never a ruin.
If the break was very long (over 3,000 nights, roughly 73 real days), the remainder is carried forward as a generous lump sum so the recalculation does not take forever.
Every 7 nights (4 hr 05 real time) the house takes stock and shows occupancy, average rate, revenue per available room, staff ratio and result. Plus the market comparison: the regional average sits at about 41.80 € revenue per available room and moves with weekday and season. One line tells you whether your pricing strategy works.
Important: revenues and costs are booked per night, not in one lump at the weekend. The weekly closing is a report, not a payday — there are no nasty surprises.
From level 5 the second house becomes available, then another one every three to four levels — up to the Cala Piedra Resort on Mallorca with 300 rooms. You switch between houses using the bar at the top; the 🏛️ Houses tab shows them all side by side.
⚠️ A portfolio lives on the MIX, not on the count. A mountain hotel carries January, a seaside hotel carries July. Collect only holiday houses and you earn brilliantly for four months and pay fixed costs for eight. The year band in the portfolio shows you with twelve bars when your year carries and where it collapses — red means weak.
Every house has its own character: a conference hotel is full Monday to Thursday and empty at the weekend, an airport hotel has short stays and must be staffed around the clock, a budget house lives on dormitory rooms. What makes sense in which house is calculated for you on every tile.
From house 2 there is a minimum rent. It falls due even when the house is empty — you always pay the higher of the two amounts (turnover rent or minimum rent), never both. Empty rooms now really hurt, and that is exactly what separates the professional from the beginner.
⚠️ The kitchen is a door, not a money printer. A hotel restaurant earns 5 to 15 % of turnover in real life, and it is the same here. Build it as a source of income and you will be disappointed — build it as a prerequisite and you get further: without a restaurant there are no four and no five stars.
Half board (from level 10) needs the full kitchen and a breakfast buffet — a kitchen that cooks at night also covers the morning. Around 42 % of guests take it, and they stay longer on average.
À-la-carte restaurant (from level 13) additionally brings guests in off the street — regardless of whether your house is full. How many depends on the house: a boutique hotel in Duesseldorf attracts passing trade, a guesthouse in Leverkusen does not.
The hotel bar has the best margin in the house — evening revenue from guests who are here anyway.
🚜 Where the goods come from: today your hotel buys from the wholesaler and pays 25 % above the goods value. Below the catering card you can see what your house needs per night — rolls, eggs, milk, potatoes, meat. Later the Rheinhof farm is meant to supply that; the interface for it is already built.
There are now twenty expansions: lobby, lift, air conditioning, full kitchen, restaurant, bar, conference room, fitness room, sauna, swimming pool, spa area, childcare, entertainment, own transfer service and an in-house laundry.
⚠️ Not every expansion belongs in every house. A pool in a city hotel is the surest way into bankruptcy; in a holiday hotel it is the thing that makes the difference. The game does not hide such expansions — it calculates on the tile what they bring in THIS house and what they cost. If it says "does not pay off here", that is true.
Every expansion works through three channels: more demand, higher willingness to pay, a better score. The effect saturates — the twelfth expansion brings less than the second. And almost every one has running costs that apply even when the house is empty.
The catalogue now goes up to five stars. Four stars require at least 20 rooms on sale, a lobby, a restaurant or half board, a lift (from three floors up), a leisure facility, 16 hours of reception and at least 70 % building condition. Five stars additionally require a spa, a bar, air conditioning, 40 rooms, 30 % upscale rooms, reception around the clock, 85 % condition and a guest score of at least 8.0.
⚠️ Not every house can reach every level. The Rheinblick is a ten-room guest hotel and reaches three stars at most — no expansion changes that. The catalogue still shows the higher levels, greyed out and with a reason: a manual that stays silent looks like a bug.
Higher star ratings cost permanently: eight or sixteen paid reception hours plus service staff per occupied room. In return they bring markedly more willingness to pay and visibility.
With one house you steer yourself. With five houses it would be five times the rates per category and night, five times the roster, five times the budget — unplayable on a phone. So there are three helpers, each switchable per house:
⚠️ Automation is never better than good manual work. It aims at decent occupancy and reacts only after an event, never before. Measured, an attentive player gets around 6 % more out of it. You are buying clicks, not an advantage.
Overbooking (from level 18) sells more rooms than you have — because experience says 4 to 8 % of guests never turn up. When it works out it is pure profit. When it does not, you have to relocate: 150 % of the room rate at the hotel next door, a taxi on top and a very bad review.
⚠️ The slider is at zero, and no-shows only happen once you turn it up. If you never touch it, you will not notice this mechanic at all. And with ten rooms, 6 % overbooking is exactly 0.6 rooms — it only really pays off from about forty rooms upwards, and the card tells you so.
Linen stock: every occupied night uses one set, and it is back after two nights (with an in-house laundry after one). The starting stock covers full occupancy with a reserve; if you grow quickly you get a warning. If it is still not enough, sets are bought at three times the price — so it always stays a matter of money and never hits the business.
Individual damage (heating, water, lift, kitchen, roof, Wi-Fi, pool water) only occurs below 72 % building condition, and there is a warning above that. A new house starts at 78 % — so you are safe as long as you do not leave the maintenance budget at zero. That is exactly what it is for.
Besides Roomfinder (17 % commission, carries the base load) there are now NestFree (21 %, leisure guests, strong Friday to Sunday) and Kontor (13 %, business travellers, strong Monday to Thursday). Each is switchable per house.
⚠️ Three portals do not bring three markets. The same guests see the same listing several times. The second portal only contributes about half of its raw value, the third a fifth — together around 28 % more reach, paid for with their commission. Which portal suits your house is decided by the day of the week: a conference hotel needs Kontor, a holiday hotel needs NestFree.
From level 25 you can train your staff — one slider per house, no personnel files. Three levels, each takes five nights and works permanently afterwards: trained staff clean more rooms in the same hour (up to 13 minutes more per hour) and earn better reviews.
It is the only way to serve more rooms without more staff.
From three stars and twelve rooms on sale, allotment offers start arriving by themselves. A company (or, in a holiday hotel, a tour operator) books fixed rooms at a fixed rate: business houses Monday to Thursday, holiday houses Friday to Sunday.
The trade-off: you get secure occupancy with no portal commission and no vacancy risk — in return those rooms are committed. Even in trade-fair week, when you could have sold them for twice as much.
⚠️ This calculation does not always work out. Measured: in a conference hotel that is full Monday to Thursday anyway, an allotment costs 3 to 10 % of the result. In an airport hotel, which fills up less easily, it brings 12 to 28 %. Which applies to your house depends on your occupancy — the card gives you the amount per contract night so you can compare.
There is always at most one contract and at most one offer. An offer stands for a few nights and then expires by itself — declining one costs you nothing. You cannot get out early.
For predictable peaks: you book hours for a fixed period (30, 60 or 90 nights) at 14.20 € per hour instead of the 17.00 € of casual staff. A mountain hotel in winter or a seaside hotel in summer knows months ahead when it will be full.
⚠️ The hours keep running until the contract ends — even when the house is empty. Casual hours can be set to zero at any time, a seasonal contract cannot. Measured, a contract running through the off-season of a mountain hotel costs around 7,800 € per real day.
The break-even is printed on the card: the contract pays off if you really need the hours on at least 84 % of the contract nights (14.20 ÷ 17.00). Below that you are paying for hours nobody works.
⚠️ It is only cheaper than casual staff, never than a permanent member of staff (12.60 €). If you would have permanent hours anyway, keep them — measured, the mix-up costs 7 to 14 % of the result.
In front of the house you can see how your guests arrive: taxis, family cars with roof boxes, shuttle buses, coaches. Who pulls up depends on the type of house — and that explains, without a single number, why which expansion pays off where:
The density follows the time of day: departures with suitcases in the morning, the arrival wave in the afternoon, a single taxi at night.
⭐ And this is where the arrival time becomes visible: if your cleaning window has been missed, you see the guests waiting outside the door instead of walking in. That is the same time pressure the number in the staff tab already describes — now you can watch it.
⚠️ This is presentation, not mechanics. There is nothing to click, nothing to decide and no extra penalty. The waiting guest is the face of the delay consequence that already exists — not a second punishment on top.
A coach pulling up, by the way, is your running tour-operator allotment. No new rule — the mechanic simply gets a face.
How many of your guests arrive in their own car depends on the type of house — from 20 % at the airport hotel (the shuttle runs there) to 80 % at the mountain hotel. It is the same figure that decides who pulls up at your door.
⚠️ Too few spaces cost you NOTHING. Enough spaces raise the "location and arrival" sub-score by up to 0.8 points; too few do not lower it. There is only a bonus here that you either get or do not.
Every house comes with some spaces. As you grow they get tight — then the expansion is worth a thought. What it costs depends on the location, and that is the real appeal:
Measured, at three stars and fully built: at the mountain hotel the parking pays for itself after 26 real hours, at the coast after 21, at the spa hotel after 35 — a gravel lot, and almost everyone comes by car. Downtown it takes an underground garage and hardly anyone drives themselves: there it takes 460 to 540 real hours, and at the airport hotel 520. The tile works it out for your house.
Honesty belongs here. Not built: the renovation cycle after five game years, winter closure as its own mechanic (blocking rooms already works today) and the site view from above.
Also open is the supply chain: today the hotel buys its goods from the wholesaler. The interface to the Rheinhof farm is built and already shows you the demand — it is just not delivered yet.
None of it is shown here as an empty promise — what you see in the game actually works.