These are the two slowest-moving and most powerful variables in the simulator. Both compound over many periods. Both are easy to ignore early. Both are very hard to recover once damaged.
The pills
You'll see both on the top bar.
From left to right: hotel name, type, stars, service score, reputation, period, cash.
| Pill | What it tracks |
|---|---|
| Service score | A measure of your hotel's operational quality right now, built from your amenity mix and brand affiliation |
| Reputation | Your long-term word-of-mouth score, built across many periods |
Both run on a 0–100 scale. Both are color-coded (red = poor, amber = average, green = strong).
Service score
Service score reflects the current period's operational quality — what you've built into the hotel.
What drives it
- Active amenities — each amenity you've installed contributes points to your service score. Higher tiers contribute more.
- Brand affiliation — joining a strong brand adds a service-score boost on top of your amenity base. Stronger brands give a bigger boost.
- Independent / own program — no brand boost. You're on your own amenity stack.
Where to tune it
My Hotel → Amenities (install or upgrade amenities) and My Hotel → Loyalty (affiliate with a brand) are the two levers.
How fast it moves
The new score takes effect once your new amenity comes online or your brand affiliation activates — typically the next period after you commit. There's no slow ramp-up for service score itself (reputation, however, takes longer to react — see below).
What it impacts
- Guest satisfaction in the current period
- The trajectory of your reputation over time
- Your perceived quality vs competitors (the "package" guests are choosing among)
Reputation
Reputation moves slowly because it's an accumulation. Every period, the engine looks at how well your hotel performed (service score, guest experience, amenity quality, brand affiliation) and nudges your reputation up or down.
What drives it
| Driver | Direction |
|---|---|
| Service score | Strong → ↑ reputation, weak → ↓ |
| Amenity quality | Better amenities than your peer set → ↑ |
| Brand affiliation | A strong brand → small ↑ (brand standards lift your reputation floor) |
| Marketing — Baseline campaigns | Long-term brand-building campaigns → small ↑ over many periods |
| Overbooking penalties | Walks (selling rooms you don't have) → ↓ |
| Time | Slight decay each period (everything decays a little — keeps you working) |
How fast it moves
Slowly. A single period's good performance nudges reputation by a small amount. It takes 4–6 periods of consistent strong performance to meaningfully move from "okay" to "strong."
This is by design. In the real world, hotel reputation builds over years, not weeks. The simulator compresses the timeline but preserves the dynamic.
What it impacts
- Guest choice — higher-reputation hotels capture a larger share of demand at any given price
- Pricing power — you can charge more without losing demand
- Resilience — strong-reputation hotels weather bad periods better
The pending-change preview
When you make a decision that will change service score or reputation but hasn't been run yet, the pill shows you a pending preview — an arrow indicating where the score is going.
For example, if you activate an Influencer campaign that will nudge reputation up by a few points:
⭐ Rep 64 → 68
This preview:
- Refreshes immediately when you commit a change (no page reload needed)
- Is a projection based on what the engine thinks will happen
- May differ slightly from the final actual value (other things move in parallel)
A reputation pill showing a pending change (left: plain, right: projection arrow visible).
Why these matter for revenue
Two hotels with identical pricing strategies but different reputation and service scores will get very different results. The higher-rep, higher-service hotel:
- Gets more demand at the same price (more guests choose it)
- Can raise prices without losing as much demand
- Recovers faster from bad periods
The lower-rep, lower-service hotel:
- Must lean on lower prices to stay full
- Loses customers to higher-perceived competitors at the same price
- Compounds downward — fewer bookings → less revenue → less to invest in fixes
The strategic implication
In the first 2–3 periods, invest in reputation and service. By period 5+, you'll be playing a different game than the hotels that didn't.
This is the simulator's biggest hidden lever. Hotels that obsessively price-tune in period 1 but ignore amenities and brand-building usually peak in period 3, then fade. Hotels that build the underlying engine first start slower but dominate by period 6.
Practical playbook
| Period | Reputation / service focus |
|---|---|
| 1 | Install at least one amenity in each category appropriate for your hotel type. Build your service score baseline. |
| 2 | Pick a brand path: stay independent (cheap, slow) or commit to a brand (expensive upfront, big long-term payoff). |
| 3 | Start a Baseline marketing campaign (the long-build kind). |
| 4+ | Maintain. Watch for amenity replacement timing and brand renewal. Don't let your stack go stale. |
Next
→ Chapter 11: Strategy Tips (meta-advice for sustained competitive play)