A high-rise hotel lit up at dusk on a city block, with its lobby glowing at street level and a taxi pulling up at the crossroads.
Work in progress The core hotel systems are built and working in game, but this is still an active project rather than a finished release. Later features are being designed as I go, so anything here may change.

Bringing interactive hotels to The Sims 3 for the first time ever!

The Sims 3 never got a proper hotel system. The resorts added by Island Paradise treat rooms as props: a guest walks into a tower object and disappears, pricing is fixed by tier, and nothing you furnish makes any difference. That didn't go down well with players, and ever since I've seen plenty of people asking for a real hotel system.

Hotels & Motels does just that. Rooms are recognised from the walls, doors and beds the player built. Guests book a specific room, are given the key to that door, and are checked in by a receptionist who has to be on duty. Rooms are priced on what is inside them, so decorating becomes a pricing decision.

None of this would have been possible without MonoPatching the game. Full credit goes to LazyDuchess and Shapes for making that possible.

My Role

  • Worked out how a hotel should behave in The Sims 3, then designed the systems to match.
  • Designed the check-in and checkout flows around what the player sees and does.
  • Designed the staff systems: shifts, housekeeping priorities, uniforms and staff-only areas.
  • Set the economy rules, pricing rooms on their furnishings.
  • Designed the in-game interfaces, including the uniform picker and lot requirements panel.
  • Built the mod on reverse-engineered knowledge of the original game, checking each mechanism against the decompiled 1.67 client.
  • Played every system in game to see whether it held up, and kept notes on what broke and why.

Design Decisions

You book at the desk, not in a menu

The sim walks over, queues, and picks a room while being served. Availability gets checked when they actually arrive, not when you clicked. Back out and the visit just ends, with nothing booked and nothing charged.

No receptionist, no check-in

If nobody is on duty then nobody gets a room, the player included. Staffing becomes something to think about, not a detail the game quietly handles.

Guests walk out before the room is released

Teleporting them would have been simpler, but a guest vanishing at checkout looks buggy and ruins the immersion.

Housekeepers work slower than they need to

Cleaning a room outright is quick, so one housekeeper could get through a whole hotel in an hour and then stand around all day. Instead they carry on tidying. Staff you can see working sell the place better than staff who are simply efficient.

Guests arrive as people, not room-fillers

A booking might be a couple, a group of friends, a family, or a single parent with children. There are five group types, each sized to a room and given beds that suit who they are. They sit on top of EA's own tourist system, so they behave like any other sim in the game.

Groundwork for running your own hotel

Player-owned hotels are not in yet, but the systems underneath it (per-room pricing, staff rotas, occupancy and takings) are being designed so ownership can sit on top of them rather than get bolted on later.

Hotels vs Island Paradise Resorts

Rooms
Tower objects the guest vanishes into
Real rooms, read from walls, doors and beds
Pricing
Fixed per tower tier
Per room, based on how it is furnished
Guests
Shallow and largely cosmetic
A full stay: arrive, check in, sleep, check out
Staff
Limited, with poor behaviour
Receptionists and housekeepers, with shifts and uniforms
Booking
Turn up and get assigned
Choose your room at the desk

In-game Screenshots

The Change Lot Type dialog with Community selected and Hotel chosen from the venue dropdown.
The town map at night showing the Downtown Lights Luxury Hotel with its own map tag and a guest inside.
The Select a Room dialog listing six rooms with per-night prices from 197 to 315 simoleons, how many each sleeps, connecting doors, and whether each is occupied or available.
The Hotel Check-In dialog asking how many nights, with the guest stood at the front desk being served by the receptionist.
The check-in confirmation showing Room 106, three nights at 315 simoleons a night, a total of 945, and the household funds available.
Two receptionists in matching uniforms stood behind their front desks, one labelled Bubba Wadsworth, Receptionist.
A furnished guest room with a tooltip reading Room 105, left bed assigned to Cleopatra Ammar and the right bed unassigned.
A housekeeper labelled Reynaldo Doyle making a bed on the guest floor, with other rooms visible along the corridor.
A housekeeper labelled Torrey Dexter cleaning a sink in a guest ensuite.
Two hotel guests asleep in separate assigned beds at night, with the lobby and fountain visible beyond.

Work in progress. Some UI and art is still placeholder, and a few features are yet to be built.