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How many tourist resorts on Alell?

How many huge tourist resorts on Alell?

  • 2-3

    Votes: 1 6.3%
  • 4-6

    Votes: 3 18.8%
  • 7-10

    Votes: 2 12.5%
  • 11-33

    Votes: 4 25.0%
  • 34-67

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 68-100

    Votes: 2 12.5%
  • 101-333

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 334-667

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 668-1000

    Votes: 1 6.3%
  • More than 1000

    Votes: 3 18.8%

  • Total voters
    16

rancke

Absent Friend
An old description of Alell (Spinward Marches 1706) mentions a "series of huge hotel complexes next to Alell's warm shallow seas".

What is the minimum number of huge hotel complexes you think the term 'a series' could refer to?

As a follow-up question, how many tourists do you think a 'huge hotel complex' would hold?


Hans
 
Hi,

Lacking any specific data, I'd probably try and steal some real world data for places like Dubai as maybe being a typical example city/state on such a planet.









 
Is the Las Vegas strip one huge complex, surrounded by smaller ones? or a combination of a half dozen huge complexes, or is the city one huge complez?

I guess my question is, "Define huge?" I thought of Disney World, with its associated hotels, as one complex. That is why I picked a smaller number based on the number of major cities. I figured there were many smaller resorts, to take advantage of secluded beaches and romantic getaways for tourists on crowded planets.
 
Is the Las Vegas strip one huge complex, surrounded by smaller ones? or a combination of a half dozen huge complexes, or is the city one huge complez?

I guess my question is, "Define huge?"

It's whatever you think it is. Is a 50 room hotel a huge complex? 100? 300? 1000? 3000? 10,000?

The poll question concerns the prase 'a series of', though.


Hans
 
I reread the booklet and on page 10 I read:
"Approximately 8000 people travel through the Alell system weekly, with about 57,000 tons of cargo. Many of these people never leave the port, merely using Alell as a stay over for longer trips. However, there is a significant number of tourists making Alell their destination. Alell caters to these tourists, and there are literally hundreds of tourist companies to make the proper permits and permissions easier and less of a burden."

Even if all 8000 people used those 100's of tourist companies, I can't picture anything larger than an Indian Casino. Definitely nothing like a Club Med. By itself, the local Indian Casino, with its 300 rooms, would need about 12 Prince of Vland class liners docking at the highport each week to stay in business. (Based on tourist spending two weeks on location for vacation in addition to two weeks in transit.)

DisneyWorld had 17 million tourists in 2010. Dubai had 10 million that same year.

Need to rethink tourism... I don't picture someone using low passage to stay at a huge resort complex?
 
I reread the booklet and on page 10 I read:
"Approximately 8000 people travel through the Alell system weekly, with about 57,000 tons of cargo. Many of these people never leave the port, merely using Alell as a stay over for longer trips. However, there is a significant number of tourists making Alell their destination. Alell caters to these tourists, and there are literally hundreds of tourist companies to make the proper permits and permissions easier and less of a burden."

Even if all 8000 people used those 100's of tourist companies, I can't picture anything larger than an Indian Casino. Definitely nothing like a Club Med. By itself, the local Indian Casino, with its 300 rooms, would need about 12 Prince of Vland class liners docking at the highport each week to stay in business. (Based on tourist spending two weeks on location for vacation in addition to two weeks in transit.)

DisneyWorld had 17 million tourists in 2010. Dubai had 10 million that same year.

Need to rethink tourism... I don't picture someone using low passage to stay at a huge resort complex?

May I ask what booklet you are referring too?
 
Even if all 8000 people used those 100's of tourist companies, I can't picture anything larger than an Indian Casino. Definitely nothing like a Club Med. By itself, the local Indian Casino, with its 300 rooms, would need about 12 Prince of Vland class liners docking at the highport each week to stay in business. (Based on tourist spending two weeks on location for vacation in addition to two weeks in transit.)

Yes, but a discrepancy between two statements can be resolved two ways, by amending one of the statements or the other. If Alell only gets a part of 8000 tourists per week, it won't be able to support a series of huge hotel complexes. But contrariwise, if Alell has a series of huge hotel complexes catering to tourists, it obviously must get a lot more tourists than part of 8000 each week.

DisneyWorld had 17 million tourists in 2010. Dubai had 10 million that same year.

Need to rethink tourism... I don't picture someone using low passage to stay at a huge resort complex?

There might be some who did, but the correlation would (IMO) be weak. Or rather, the correlation between people who can afford to stay at a huge hotel complex and also afford to travel mid passage would be fairly strong.

Because of the cost of interstellar travel, I think the average interstellar tourist would be somewhat wealthier than the average tourist on Earth today. However, the one-parsec (return) trip from Efate to Alell is the cheapest interstellar voyage in a Traveller universe. And Efate has a population of 8 billion. A goodly number of them should be able to afford a trip to Alell.

One should also consider that the number of passengers calculated according to the formula in FT would be the same if the back story ruled out tourists completely. Perhaps there's a case for considering tourists as over and above the FT figures?


Hans
 
8K per week is about 0.4M/year. About 4x the amount that the resort town of Girdwood gets.

If we assume 1/4 of those people actually stay, we're probably looking at 1-2 resorts...

But it's also important to note that the cost of a single mid passage is 2 years average income for the typical Spinward Marches denizen... a trip to a neighbor world is a 1%er's trip to begin with.

So those resorts are likely to be KCr2-4 per week... lavish. Because average people won't be staying there.
 
Yes, but a discrepancy between two statements can be resolved two ways, by amending one of the statements or the other. If Alell only gets a part of 8000 tourists per week, it won't be able to support a series of huge hotel complexes. But contrariwise, if Alell has a series of huge hotel complexes catering to tourists, it obviously must get a lot more tourists than part of 8000 each week.
Is local tourism expressly excluded?

A large enough world pop and the right combination of geo/astro and cultural aspects could address the discrepancy...
 
The 8000 passenger figure came from GURPS Far Trader as I believe was inferred. That always (to me at least) implied a big ship universe. Under CT, the cost for interstellar vacation travel is, again as mentioned, prohibitive.

And don't forget the local population takes vacations as well.
 
I reread the booklet and on page 10 I read:
"Approximately 8000 people travel through the Alell system weekly, with about 57,000 tons of cargo. Many of these people never leave the port, merely using Alell as a stay over for longer trips. However, there is a significant number of tourists making Alell their destination. Alell caters to these tourists, and there are literally hundreds of tourist companies to make the proper permits and permissions easier and less of a burden."

...


This sounds like a PR stretch in it's wording.
Note: it says 8,000 people travel through the Alell system weekly. It did not say 8,000 tourist.
Not calling the PR add a liar, but sound more like typical PR promotion of stretching the truth a bit to what is preceived to be real.

I do understand this is all a work of fiction, but since you asked how many tourist come through, it just might be a lower number than this.

Also, who says they have to stay 2 weeks? Maybe some stay a month and some stay for several months.

If you are going to spend that kind of money on a possible once in a life time trip, you will try to maximum your stay.

As Aramis pointed out, the wealthy will probably visit more often (repeat users). They also might have a condo/share time/ or even dedicated section sponsored by some company that they use regularly.

If that is the case, business might send good customers for a free trip there or even take large group of prospective clients there for wine, dine and spend your time presentation.

Just some of my thoughts.

Also, you might consider the Atlantis Resort as a model in this thinking of what may be present.

Dave Chase
 
Keep in mind - a lot of smaller resorts get by by being both relatively isolated and prone to zealous extremes to keep the guests anonymous...

It's all highly dependent upon how much press the stupidly rich get, how many there are, and how lavish they can get...

And that's before considering the excesses that might be legalized. Think Sex-Tourism of the sickest sort, and then make it legal there (but no going into details here). Or Drug tourism. Or violence tourism, where murder is punished... with fines. All sorts of ways to make a really good living off of a very small number of highly unsavory tourists...
 
I reread the booklet and on page 10 I read:
"Approximately 8000 people travel through the Alell system weekly, with about 57,000 tons of cargo.
Need to rethink tourism... I don't picture someone using low passage to stay at a huge resort complex?


Hi,

Try going by a budget airline to the Canaries, with your knees in your face and compare with flying Virgin Atlantic to Antigua and much more seat room.

I think it would all depend on what sort of resort it is., but 8,000 tourists a week isn't many so I'd guess a luxury resort for the wealthy.

Regards

David
 
Is local tourism expressly excluded?
Good point. I hadn't considered it before, but local tourism would definitely be catered to.

A large enough world pop and the right combination of geo/astro and cultural aspects could address the discrepancy...

According to Exit Visa Alell had a population of 203 million[*]. That should support quite a bit of tourism. But I still think that there's a case to be made for interstellar tourists being over and above the 8000 visitors figure.

[*] That would presumably have been in 1105. The UWPs in The Spinward Marches Campaign give a population multiplier if 4 in 1111, which is either a discrepancy or one hell of a population jump.


Hans
 
Another thing to consider is that just because the writeup only mentions that series of huge hotel complexes it does not follow that there are no smaller tourist hotels too.


Hans
 
I ended up spending a lot of time in the Carribbean thanks to the Navy and my Knox class frigate's operational area. There are entire islands owned by individuals or resort corporations, so I would say that whatever maximum you go for on Alell will be acceptable. For the states bound people, think of Orlando and how many hotels are there then also take into account the ones that are associated to specific attractions like SeaWorld and Disney World.
 
I ended up spending a lot of time in the Carribbean thanks to the Navy and my Knox class frigate's operational area. There are entire islands owned by individuals or resort corporations, so I would say that whatever maximum you go for on Alell will be acceptable. For the states bound people, think of Orlando and how many hotels are there then also take into account the ones that are associated to specific attractions like SeaWorld and Disney World.

The poll question concerns what is implied by the prase 'a series of'. Could it be as low as 3? 4? 5? Or higher?


Hans
 
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