What photographs do I need for my hotel?

Your photographs on your hotel website looking a bit...old? Jaded? Has your OTA told you you are being penalised for bad photography? Well, what photographs do you need for your hotel?

I am in the process of providing an estimate (we don't do quotes in the hotel photography game) for a large budget hotel chain, as they were told exactly that by their OTA. That they never had enough photographs of sufficiently high quality, and they were being penalised for it.

But seriously, how important is photography anyway?

I totally get it. High-quality hotel photography costs. With prices ranging anywhere from ￡500 up to ￡50,000 or more for a campaign, hotel photography is not an insignificant hurdle to overcome.

But look at the results. An article I read on the booking.com website, showed that more than 90% of hotel guests find photography and other visual tools useful when booking a hotel. Not only that, but a villa in Greece (in this study) said: After publishing the new photos, we raised the selling prices by 20%,” she says. “At the end of the season, not only did we have a higher average daily rate, but also a rise in occupancy, giving a turnover of over 35%.”

Unlike, for example, the airlines, booking a hotel is a visual endeavor. It's easy enough to understand what an "economy" seat is, but what is a 3-star hotel? What's the decor like? The rooms? What is the difference between a standard and super standard room? What (and this is missing in SO many hotel photographs) does the bathroom look like? The bathroom image is especially important for women with 71% of women saying the bathroom could make or break a hotel booking.

So Photography is important. But what photographs should a hotel have?

Let's get to the meat of this, shall we? Again, I was looking this up for a client I am working with. They are heavily invested in OTA's and we are trying to break that cycle. So I looked through Booking.com's knowledge base and found this article. It says you need a minimum of 24 photographs of your hotel. They should be broken down into:

The Rooms:

Ensure you photograph all the different room types. Provide at least 4 pictures of each. I tend to always have 1 "Hero Shot", which is an overall image showing as much of the room as I can. Try to avoid going UFWA (Ultra Flipping Wide Angle) as this creates a lot of distortion and also gives a false impression of your room looking bigger than it actually is....leading to bad reviews.

Following the "Hero Shot", take pictures of the room to tell the story more. Things like the view out the window, the lovely decor and textures, the tea making area, that gorgeous feature wall, or the USB charging ports next to the bed. Try to tie them all in so that part of one picture "overlaps" the next tieing them all in together. What does this mean? Let's say you have a picture of the desk area. If you then have a picture of the view, try to have a little of the desk area in the image. By looking at those two, coupled with the hero, it builds a picture in your guest's mind of the layout of the room.

Let's look at the series of photographs I took for the Swan Hotel in Bedford. The first photograph is the Hero Image. It shows the entire room. You know there is a bathroom off to the right, a double bed, sofa, desk and you can get champagne delivered to your room. The second photograph shows a vignette of the champagne and desk. You've seen them both in the first picture, now it's telling you more of the story. In the third image, you see the edge of the desk and chair with the sofa in the background. The edge of the desk and the distinctive pattern of the chair are the "ties" to the previous picture. The last picture adds to the story. It's a detail of the bedside table with the lamp. But see the edge of the cushion? You know from the previous photo that that's on the sofa. It's another tie in.

The Bathroom:

Make sure you include at least one photo of the bathroom. If it has special features, add more. You can see in the previous set that I had a tie in from the Hero Shot showing there was a bathroom there. I then showed it too.

The rest of the Hotel:

The rest is up to you. I always include a few photos of the reception area, gym, lounge, etc. following the same formula as for the rooms of telling the story by including a hero image and then vignette's.

Don't forget the external hero shot! This should almost always, if possible, be a twilight shot. That magical period of light after Golden hour and sunset or just before Sunrise. A moment comes where all the light is perfectly balanced and creates a truly stunning external image. Ensure all your internal and external lights are on. If your hotel is 1 or 2 floors high, then even some light painting on them will create a stunning photograph.

Other photographs for hotels

Not necessarily for your OTA, there are other photographs you should take. These are ideal for your website, Social and Email, and even your direct marketing efforts.

Food:

Do you have a restaurant, canteen, coffee shop, snack wagon, or cafe on-site? You are missing a trick if you are not creating high-quality food photography. With over 7,000,000,000 Google searches for Food photographs, it is a great SEO tool to have on your website. Not only that, but good food photography will entice your guests to your hotels' restaurant. Besides, Instagram was made for food photography. You just have to do it!

Lifestyle Photography:

One of the keys to getting your hotel seen is to allow your guests to put themselves in that situation. Lifestyle hotel photography is inspirational and aspirational. A pool looks so much more inviting if someone is in it. A restaurant full of people looks like a place to visit. The beauty of lifestyle photography is you can go about it in more than one way. The way I approach it is by getting to know you and who your ideal client is. Then hiring models that look like your ideal client, we dress them in the clothes you ideal guest would wear and put them in the car they would drive, with shopping bags from those shops they would frequent. This is obviously time and budget intensive but creates the perfect "wish I was there" photograph. 

Another approach is to get a member of staff trained in basic photography techniques, give them a camera and get them out among your guests. Just remember to get a Model Release form filled out. While of a lower quality, these types of images do work really well.

A third approach could be user-generated content. As your guests to use a hashtag related to your brand and encourage guests to upload to Instagram using that hashtag. You can use this to boost your gallery. These tend to be the least professional looking and may need to be closely monitored and curated. 

Portraits, Headshots, Environmental Portraits:

These types of photographs are so often overlooked for hotels. Your aim in Social Media Marketing is for your guests to get to know you, trust you, and want to book with you. By showing your staff doing what they do, you are building trust and a relationship. You are building your tribe! That's what we are aiming for! Why not run features on your chefs, management teams, reception staff, and cleaners? Have interviews with them and take some high-quality photographs of them doing their job. These types of photographs do incredibly well on Social Media.

So that's it. We have reached the end. If you would like some more information on Social Media, Email, or Direct Marketing. Or some information on Hiring a Hospitality Photographer, why not download my handy ebooks on these topics.

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