Beta 012: Tourism

[Leutria]

Beta 012: Tourism

Proposed Change: Recalibrate the measurement of nations' attractiveness to tourists, with reference to environmental beauty, culture, safety, and national personality.

[Leutria]

I take a hit here, but I am in support of this change. I am pretty sure I have run afoul of the issue of trying to favour tourism over the environment and taking a hit to my tourism. Be nice for these statistics to be able to diverge a bit, and might actually give a better idea of what my actually base tourism industry is like.

All that said, I actually would prefer the tourism industry being presented like the other industries. When I was trying to diversify my economy I would have loved to know exactly how much larger my tourism industry was compared to my other industries.

[Lord Dominator]

Personally I'm mildly surprised I get a tiny (relative to other nations, by my scale it's nearly double) bump to mine, considering my scores in all the stats related to being unpleasant

[Leutria]

Personally I'm mildly surprised I get a tiny (relative to other nations, by my scale it's nearly double) bump to mine, considering my scores in all the stats related to being unpleasant

I am betting your change is entirely due to the fact this makes environmental beauty less important. Right now it is weighted far too heavily.

[Lord Dominator]

Personally I'm mildly surprised I get a tiny (relative to other nations, by my scale it's nearly double) bump to mine, considering my scores in all the stats related to being unpleasant

I am betting your change is entirely due to the fact this makes environmental beauty less important. Right now it is weighted far too heavily.

Oh sure, just general amusement that apparently I'll be getting more tourists with the same deliberately terrible environment.

[Outer Sparta]

I take a hit here, but I am in support of this change. I am pretty sure I have run afoul of the issue of trying to favour tourism over the environment and taking a hit to my tourism. Be nice for these statistics to be able to diverge a bit, and might actually give a better idea of what my actually base tourism industry is like.

All that said, I actually would prefer the tourism industry being presented like the other industries. When I was trying to diversify my economy I would have loved to know exactly how much larger my tourism industry was compared to my other industries.

Exactly. Mine will take a hit, but it's due to environmental beauty having an excessive boost. In a real-life case, China has many tourists that visit while not necessarily having a world-class environment. Other countries may have a world-class environment but not many tourists would visit.

[Leutria]

I am betting your change is entirely due to the fact this makes environmental beauty less important. Right now it is weighted far too heavily.

Oh sure, just general amusement that apparently I'll be getting more tourists with the same deliberately terrible environment.

Ahhh, they must be coming for your casinos and shopping.

Speaking of which, the retail and gambling industries absolutely should be factored into tourism if they are not already. After all in the real world those both can be pretty large things that can bring in tourists.

[Merconitonitopia]

I must admit that I am bitter. I am presently 310th for tourism. As of this beta, my tourism will be set back by something like three years, and I'll hazard a guess it'll never get anywhere close to where it is now in terms of rank.
That said, I support the change. Tourism has been weighted heavily in favour of environment for as long as I can remember. My nation bottom 1 percent for safety (though I don't know) and as for 'national personality,' I imagine Merconitonitopia isn't exactly everyone's cup of tea: compulsory nudism, no contraceptives, no meat, no internet, human sacrifice...
Also, airplanes are banned. I wonder if that makes a difference.

Looking at the top 10 tourism nations, there is not a single one of them who see a drop less than 38 percent. I have a feeling this one will prove divisive.

[Lord Dominator]

Oh sure, just general amusement that apparently I'll be getting more tourists with the same deliberately terrible environment.

Ahhh, they must be coming for your casinos and shopping.

Speaking of which, the retail and gambling industries absolutely should be factored into tourism if they are not already. After all in the real world those both can be pretty large things that can bring in tourists.

Hmm, fair point

[Leutria]

I am not sure those high in tourism really need to worry so much about falling in the ranking. I would best most of the top tourism nations are taking a big hit. Out of curiosity I looked at the top 10:

Kindjal: -5330.08
Tzo: -4256.18
Deep South Borland: -3651.77
Marimite: -3272.53
St Stephen n Critters: -3351.48
Timao: -3695.66
Pax Aurea: -2712.38
Kyupaa: -3115.03
Wilkshire: -3049.39
Gynostan: -3470.76

So as you see all of the top 10 are dropping, and by a lot. I would hazard a guess you would have to go really far down the census to find a nation who has an increase, so I am assuming the top nations will at the very least remain near the top.

[Merconitonitopia]

It looks like there will be a general decline among the tourism giants. I wonder if another subset of nations will come to take their place, or if there will be a mere depression of the higher end of the spectrum, with little change in rank. Time will reveal.

[Leutria]

It looks like there will be a general decline among the tourism giants. I wonder if another subset of nations will come to take their place, or if there will be a mere depression of the higher end of the spectrum, with little change in rank. Time will reveal.

In theory we could find out, but that would take way more effort that I am comfortable putting in right now

[Trotterdam]

Personally I'm mildly surprised I get a tiny (relative to other nations, by my scale it's nearly double) bump to mine, considering my scores in all the stats related to being unpleasant

I guess that while everything about your nation is unpleasant, your environment is even more unpleasant than the other problems, and so a reduction in its importance works in your favor

Or what Leutria said, of course.

[Marxist Germany]

Oh sure, just general amusement that apparently I'll be getting more tourists with the same deliberately terrible environment.

Ahhh, they must be coming for your casinos and shopping.

Speaking of which, the retail and gambling industries absolutely should be factored into tourism if they are not already. After all in the real world those both can be pretty large things that can bring in tourists.

Agreed

[La Xinga]

Ok, this will destroy my tourism industry!

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Exactly. Mine will take a hit, but it's due to environmental beauty having an excessive boost. In a real-life case, China has many tourists that visit while not necessarily having a world-class environment. Other countries may have a world-class environment but not many tourists would visit.

That's it exactly, and the driving reason behind the change.

Right now the quality of environment matters more than the actual size of the tourism industry itself. Build an airport or a resort, and tourism drops.

Additionally, there's a lot of factors that aren't being currently properly considered, like strength of culture for example, or how much of a craphole a place is politically. I mean, even if North Korea was beautiful, we still wouldn't want to holiday there.

This one is a straight rebalancing of weightings to a place that we think are more rational.

[Aelyria]

I am rather confused about the effect of these changes. Both Environment and Safety are quite high in my nation, and Safety is much higher than environment. Is there just a general intended reduction to high Tourism scores?

Edit: likewise, Aelyria is a genial nation, with high economy and freedoms, and Tourism listed among its biggest industries, with a strong Culture rating. It just seems really weird that I would drop 20% of my tourism solely from a "rebalancing" rather than an intentional reduction of tourism scores.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

I am rather confused about the effect of these changes. Both Environment and Safety are quite high in my nation, and Safety is much higher than environment. Is there just a general intended reduction to high Tourism scores?

Edit: likewise, Aelyria is a genial nation, with high economy and freedoms, and Tourism listed among its biggest industries, with a strong Culture rating. It just seems really weird that I would drop 20% of my tourism solely from a "rebalancing" rather than an intentional reduction of tourism scores.

Nature of the rebalancing does mean all scores are going to shift towards a midpoint, yes. Don't look so much as what your absolute score does, more at your relative position globally.

[Merconitonitopia]

Alas it is tricky to tell what will happen to the rankings, short of sifting through dozens of nations.

[New Camelot of Avalonia]

I was quite surprised by this! It would take 1.5k away from my tourism industry, or over 30% of my tourism industry. But I feel as though I have other stats that support my tourism industry, including culture, public transport, inclusiveness, development, compassion, safety, and integrity, weather, niceness, all which are in the top 1%. I wonder if these are taken into account, and if not, if it would be better to postpone the update until relevant statistics are also taken into account (I have pretty good statistics for things that I would think of when it comes to what is important for tourism, so I can't imagine a 30% drop in tourism for me).

Additionally, for those where there is a drop in tourism, will this drop affect other stats, like average income?

[Candlewhisper Archive]

I was quite surprised by this! It would take 1.5k away from my tourism industry, or over 30% of my tourism industry. But I feel as though I have other stats that support my tourism industry, including culture, public transport, inclusiveness, development, compassion, safety, and integrity, all which are in the top 1%. I wonder if these are taken into account, and if not, if it would be better to postpone the update until relevant statistics are also taken into account (I have pretty good statistics for things that I would think of when it comes to what is important for tourism, so I can't imagine a 30% drop in tourism for me).

Additionally, for those where there is a drop in tourism, will this drop affect other stats, like average income?

This one is going to cause upheaval all over, because right now the Tourism stat basically just heavily echoes environment.

The other things you mention (culture etc.) are being weighted more heavily, but that doesn't mean that being strong in all those things means you'll end up where you started. Also, be aware that the absolute change in your Tourism stat isn't going to be the same shift as your world centile position in Tourism, as everybody else's Tourism is moving too. Relatively speaking, you may or may not end up at a lower or higher centile than you were before.

Broadly speaking nations with poor environment will see Tourism rise, nations with great environments will see Tourism fall, but broadly speaking folk will remain in roughly the same centile band as before. Individual cases may always be outliers, but if you look at a big graph of all nations moving, you have the bottom end ones moving upwards towards the midline and the top end ones moving downward, but it's a very wiggly line, because every nation is so different.

[New Camelot of Avalonia]

I was quite surprised by this! It would take 1.5k away from my tourism industry, or over 30% of my tourism industry. But I feel as though I have other stats that support my tourism industry, including culture, public transport, inclusiveness, development, compassion, safety, and integrity, all which are in the top 1%. I wonder if these are taken into account, and if not, if it would be better to postpone the update until relevant statistics are also taken into account (I have pretty good statistics for things that I would think of when it comes to what is important for tourism, so I can't imagine a 30% drop in tourism for me).

Additionally, for those where there is a drop in tourism, will this drop affect other stats, like average income?

This one is going to cause upheaval all over, because right now the Tourism stat basically just heavily echoes environment.

The other things you mention (culture etc.) are being weighted more heavily, but that doesn't mean that being strong in all those things means you'll end up where you started. Also, be aware that the absolute change in your Tourism stat isn't going to be the same shift as your world centile position in Tourism, as everybody else's Tourism is moving too. Relatively speaking, you may or may not end up at a lower or higher centile than you were before.

Broadly speaking nations with poor environment will see Tourism rise, nations with great environments will see Tourism fall, but broadly speaking folk will remain in roughly the same centile band as before. Individual cases may always be outliers, but if you look at a big graph of all nations moving, you have the bottom end ones moving upwards towards the midline and the top end ones moving downward, but it's a very wiggly line, because every nation is so different.

Hmmmmm. I understand that this is correcting how environment has played a part in skewing tourism. But as it says, " with reference to environmental beauty, culture, safety, and national personality.", could you explain how those other stats will play into the recalibration? For nations with high all of these, will they be boosted? For instance, if two nations have really good culture and safety and natonal personality, I would like to be reassured that the country with a much higher environment will not be decreased in tourism more than a nation with a bad environment increases.

I am very concerned about this, as tourism is one of my biggest industries, and I would like to confirm that a nation where tourism would be considered high not only because of the environment (but because of the other stats that are very high) is not harmed by a tourism re calibration based on the environment.

Additionally, would stats other than tourism be affected? Is this a chain reaction, where tourism changes, and then average income changes, etc.... ?

Thank you for your time!

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Your assumptions are largely correct in that last post, but I'm not permitted to hint at exact ratios, only to say that other factors will be upscaled in relative importance compared to the environment.

[Vivolkha]

The Tourism boost from having a high Environmental Beauty has long been admitted to be excessive. Full support for this beta. I really don't know what "national personality" means though (Ideological Radicality? A hidden stat?).

[Trotterdam]

The Tourism boost from having a high Environmental Beauty has long been admitted to be excessive. Full support for this beta. I really don't know what "national personality" means though (Ideological Radicality? A hidden stat?).

I'm guessing stuff like Niceness.