I did have a theme park type vacation hood, but as you say the patience for it wasn't there. My water park was the only lot I ever saved, polished up and uploaded. I also had an African safari park (really annoyed I lost that)and a fairy fantasy place although the space ship restaurant in the middle didn't quite go. It had this bridge of clear tile with water jets that you had to walk along to get to the space ship-that would have been better in a future type park. The place was quite a mishmash of lots. Then I stopped building it for a couple of years, and I accidentally deleted it when I scrapped the main hood I had attached it to.

I like Bon voyage and I find Sims on vacations a lot of fun! And I am convinced that Sims need to go on vacation at least twice a year

City vacations would be so cool! Sims could do activities like shopping and gambling and clubbing and visiting museums that aren't really done in the current destinations. For years I've dreamt of building vacation destinations based off real life cities like New York, London, Paris, and Las Vegas. Downtown could be a great starting point for something like that.

I love this idea! It would be so cool to have a city like Tokyo or Hong Kong as a vacation destination. I can imagine lots of skyscrapers and neon and gambling and shopping. It would be awesome if it felt exotic and futuristic at the same time.

I really like the "Urban Vacation" idea. I guess I can handle a few trips into the depths of Mother Nature every once in a while, but I like to visit cities more than I do a forest in some place three miles away from the nearest highway or whatever. Given my everlasting hatred of suburbia that often leaks into my Sim's worlds, I enjoy creating urban neighborhoods and having true urban vacation destinations would be pretty fantastic. Currently the only "urban" pre-made vacation destination would probably be Takemizu Village.

About Urban Vacation Hoods: Is it possible to have Hotels in the main hood (as most cities have hotels)?

No, you can only have them in vacation neighborhoods. However, with appropriate hacks -- like, for instance, the one that allows sleeping on community lots -- you can rig one up. It can even be owned. But it won't work exactly like a BV hotel.

I'm pretty sure I once placed a hotel (one of the ones in the bin that came with Bon Voyage) in a Downtown. But I didn't try having my sim check in for an extended stay -- only for long enough to convince his boyfriend that it's perfectly okay to imitate Mr. Spock -- including the pon farr stage of things. It worked just fine for that, and they were able to sleep on the lot without any hacks.

I built "The Bed & Breakfast" in my campus. I have another copy in my main 'hood.
This works great, I was thinking of having a sim own it..then I forgot.
I built this manly so my YA could have interesting.."dates". Their dorm is small, and they only have twin beds see.

I'm pretty sure it's possible to create and use hotels in the main neighborhoods. I remember creating a motel in Pleasantview where everyone would check in order to consummate their affairs away from home.

As I understand it, you can build hotels in non-vacation neighborhoods, yes, You build them like you do apartment buildings, as residential lots first, then you change the lot zoning. Or you can place a downloaded one. However, you can't book a vacation at them, which is what I meant. I've never done it, myself, but I imagine you can only visit them as a community lot and use them that way. Since I've never done it, I couldn't say if you can book rooms as a walk-up customer or not and it would work properly from there.

Now I want to make an urban Far Eastern vacation destination with skyscrapers, casino's and shopping and a theme park! :-/

I'd DL something like that.

I made a hotel in the main lot and it was as iCad says -- it was a perfectly fine community lot, with no BV extras.

I guess, as long as your sims can find everything they need (sleep, eat, bathe etc..) BV extras aren't needed!
Have your family, single sim..whoever stay for as long as they(you) want. I have no interests for a hotel so i might not try this, but this is a neat thing to have indeed. lol

I have a hotel and campground in Pleasantview. I added a shopping district that has beach lots that has another campground on the beach. The hotel is perfect for rendezvous. I live in Florida and we do camp on weekends at the beach so the campground on the beach serves this purpose. And If I can't go hunting, I do fish, so the campground in Pleastantview serves this purpose. You gotta play with the game you got, so make it work for you.

I am sure you can! I added the hotel from the lots bin to my hood and my Sims slept over there - before I got UC. I had all ep's and sp's except for TSS - and then I added the inn from the bin to the business hood (which was just Bluewater Village) and they slept over there as well. I had them walk there, they could book in and out and everything else. Just no vacation things like tour guides and stuff, but otherwise, it worked fine.

Okay - next time I iwll read everything before rushing into a reply

Bringing this thread back to help jumpstart some building inspiration! I want to make a few custom vacation hoods so it's not just Three Lakes/Twikkii/Takemizu all the time and so the Beakers aren't vacationing with the Baldwins.

Island:
- a beachy, ocean-themed (perhaps a shoot-off of Bluewater Village?). Boardwalks, perhaps roller rinks, oceany-things to do.
- Mediterranean, Moroccan-themed. Bathhouses could be a big hit here.
- Jungle ruins of a lost civilization...or of an early alien landing?

Mountain:
- Alpinloch is a winter wonderland resort that I'm working out right now. It's got skating rinks, ski lodges (hotel), cottages (Grandma's and Gingerbread), personal chateaus (Adirondack and Appalachian), the Ice Castle...
- (I'm having trouble coming up with mountain ideas. You go camping in the woods - that's it)

Far East:
- Yin-Yang Isle is a temple retreat for Sims who want to meditate and study! It would be nice if I could have my sims share a room with all the other guests but the best I think I can do without cheats is to give them a room only simple enough for a bed. Featuring gardens and ponds, temples, libraries, tai chi studios and tea rooms.
- Far East city, as previously suggested, where technology meets tradition. Internet cafes and clubs, mostly.


Suggestions? More ideas? Pictures of pretty Sim lots that I can pin and use as references?

I like your ideas! I agree... mountain destinations are trickier. Maybe an old world town in the mountains, such as Salzburg, Austria? It doesn't really fit with the BV mountain theme, but it could be stunning, if done right. Another option would be something like Niagara Falls, with a US side and a Canada side. I don't think that's technically mountainous, or how you'd do the falls, but it would fit better with the BV mountain theme.

Something I tried to do once for a beach vacation hood was a seaside resort that was built up in the 1920s-1930s, so lots of art deco buildings, a pier, lighthouse, stuff like that. You know, a place where Hercules Poirot might have gone on holiday. I downloaded some art deco lots, which were actually hard to find, but then I got overwhelmed with trying to make a coherent location. I'm still noodling about it, though. A way to make it updated to present day would be to add some crappy tourist lots, a modern hotel or two, and then use grungy walls on the "original" resort buildings.

So, has anyone managed to convert Downtown into a (custom) vacation destination? It would be quite interesting! I thought by now someone did. Or is there a tutorial for this?

Here's Mootilda's Tutorial.

If anyone's converted it, I haven't seen it. It would definitely need some lodging and a couple more landmark buildings. But that could be really nifty, MMAA!

(Side note: I need to explore that tutorial to see if I can make my amped-up SSU into a template for future games. I'll eventually need a Uni for Meadow Creek.)

That tutorial was really helpful :D

I did convert the Downtown into a vacation destination, and also converted one of the lots (Hans' Trap Door Corp - perfect for a downtown-y hotel) into a hotel. Unfortunately, not sure if I should put it up for download once I'm finished or not, since I have the Ultimate Collection, as such I cannot run AGS, which means that this custom downtown vacation destination would require all of the expansions and stuff packs.

EDIT: Also gonna convert The House of Fallen Trees into a hotel, it could be a spooky haunted hotel :P

EDIT 2: The House of Fallen Trees is done! It ended up looking amazing, if I do say so myself. I was going for a bit of a worn-out, older look, but generally I'm not super super good at decorating houses in The Sims. It still turned out really nice, and I kind of want to have a Sim go on vacation there

I would LOVE it (and you) if you did make it available for upload. What vacation destination did you assign it too?

I assigned it to mountain because I didn't really know what else to assign it as

But I had a few Sims go to the Downtown on vacation, and everything seems to work just fine, I'll probably do some more renovating and a bit more testing and then I might put it up for download