It's looking great Rflong! I love the hotel.
About the shops / homes, I did try that once, if you remember, I showed you a picture. Initially it was a long row of old shops, with apartments over the top, but I had trouble with it, which it why I broke it up into separate builds when I made them for this world.
The apartments functioned all right, but for some reason I was annoyed that a lot with only one NPC door had about 20 sims living in it.
I'm not sure if it was because when I was testing it, there were only 2 res lots in the world or not, but I ditched the whole idea anyway.
Perhaps though with a bit of tweaking and experimenting, you could get one working for your world and have some shop / apartments.