The Crucial Role of Property Photography in Crafting a Hotel's Brand Identity

In the highly competitive landscape of the hospitality industry, well-planned and executed property photography is critical to a hotel’s success. While its most basic function is to show consumers what the hotel looks like, the power of photography extends far beyond mere visuals.

In a growing age of social media and image-based consumerism, it’s important to be able to go beyond capturing accurate photos. There is an expectation—and really, a goal to be on the cutting edge—to leverage immersive media like 360-degree photos, 3D renderings and video to tell a compelling visual story. This not only showcases the property so guests know what to expect, but it also builds anticipation and connection so that they are excited to stay with us and capture their own memories.

Drone photography and 360-degree virtual tours can significantly enhance a hotel’s competitive advantage. Virtual tours are particularly impactful for hotel sales teams, enabling them to conduct virtual site visits for customers who cannot visit in person. Drones provide unique angles and perspectives that cannot be captured otherwise.

Key Elements of Effective Hotel Property Photography

So where does a team start? The first step is to schedule a photo shoot to capture high-quality photos. While properties may have varying degrees of budget, there are still several key components that contribute to a compelling and impactful creative session.

When preparing for a photo shoot, understanding and adhering to brand requirements is essential. As you can imagine, each hotel brand has a unique identity with specific guidelines that ensure consistency and quality across all their properties. It is important to keep these guidelines in mind when capturing multimedia assets while also highlighting the elements, activities and offerings that make the hotel one-of-a-kind. Depending on the hotel, one of the most impactful ways to develop a compelling story is capturing lifestyle and human element photos and video.

Don’t skimp here – hiring professional models that represent your target market, and a team to help style and capture various vantage points, can make or break the results. Another high-value strategy is to utilize the evening time just before sunset, to capture the wonderful blue light that is only available for about 20 – 30 minutes. This time of day is perfect for exterior imagery that creates a very pleasing result.

There’s also a huge benefit in engaging the entire property team when capturing images that reflect the hotel well. By involving everyone from sales and operations to housekeeping, each team member takes ownership of their role, contributing to the overall success of the shoot. Additionally, they are able to speak to those elements and activities that guests tend to love which helps contribute to even more engaging imagery. This collective effort ensures that all aspects of the hotel are presented at their best.

It’s well-known that thorough preparation is a key factor in gathering high-value content to properly showcase a hotel. It may seem elementary, but it’s vital to clean, declutter and make improvements to the hotel spaces to ensure the property is immaculate and inviting in the final photography. In addition, there should be a detailed plan outlining the time the photographer will spend in each room, along with a precise shot list informed by the considerations mentioned earlier and market research. This research should focus on what’s performing well for local competitors and what guests prioritize when booking a getaway.

Finally, showcasing the hotel’s unique amenities can make a significant impact. Highlighting features such as a beautiful pool, a cozy reading nook or a state-of-the-art fitness center can set the property apart from its competitors. These unique elements should be prominently displayed to attract and engage potential guests.

As part of the marketing team, we always send a member to every photo shoot to assist the property team. We pride ourselves on working together to create impactful and engaging experiences—and the photography and marketing of the property is no exception! We are able to ensure the shoot runs smoothly while they focus on providing excellent guest experiences.

Balancing Aesthetics with Accuracy

One of the challenges in hotel photography is balancing the need to showcase the hotel’s aesthetics while providing an accurate representation of what guests can expect. It’s important to resist the urge to add, remove or change amenities solely for the sake of a photograph. By hiring a professional photographer and being well-prepared, excellent results can generally be achieved. Moreover, incorporating lifestyle photography where appropriate, enables viewers to envision themselves in the space, fostering a personal connection that resonates with potential guests without setting unrealistic expectations.

High-quality photography plays a significant role in a potential guest’s decision-making process when booking a hotel. It helps to build credibility in the marketplace by showing all areas of the hotel in the best possible light without misleading consumers. Exceptional photos can create a great first impression, highlight the hotel’s unique features and amenities and evoke an emotional connection that helps potential guests visualize themselves at the hotel. In a competitive marketplace, high-quality images can set one hotel apart from another.

This is essential to keep in mind when crafting an effective sales and marketing strategy as well. High-quality images provide sales teams with the content that helps improve conversion rates for both group and business travel customers. This is especially true when a team is able to implement the immersive media options like 360-degree and 3D imagery in addition to traditional photography. At Valor Hospitality, we utilize services to produce high-quality immersive media to create a tech-forward way for our sellers to share content with customers via text, screen share, email and sales proposals. This digital toolkit acts as a repository for all sales materials, including traditional photography, immersive media, video, digital brochures, floor plans, menus and more.

Professional property photography can directly influence booking rates and guest satisfaction. For example, at one of our newly opened golf resorts in Northwest Georgia, the first phase of the photo shoot was conducted 45 days after opening, with final photos received 60 days post-opening. Once the new images were uploaded to the hotel website and various third-party sites, website visits increased by approximately 35% within three weeks, and the hotel’s booking conversion rate continued to improve. High-quality photography and video played a major role in these improvements.

Amplifying Impact Through Social Media

High-quality photography is the heartbeat of social media platforms like Instagram, Meta and Pinterest, which are highly visual. Even more, with the popularity of video apps like TikTok or Instagram reels, video is also becoming exceedingly important. Eye-catching, high-quality images and vertical video help maintain a hotel’s brand identity and support the overall marketing strategy.

Additionally, and something we are seeing more and more of, is user-generated content (UGC). UGC can be an effective marketing strategy and utilizes photos shared by guests to build credibility and reach new customers at little or no cost. Effective UGC can be used on social media, in emails, paid advertising and on the hotel’s website all to once again tell the consistent story of the property. Many Valor hotels run contests to generate impactful UGC and create branded hashtags to encourage guests to share their experiences on social media.

Avoiding Common Mistakes and Embracing Emerging Trends

Updating property photography regularly is critical, especially when there are changes to the hotel, such as renovations or new services and amenities. Professional photo shoots can be costly, so it’s beneficial to find a local photographer who can take a few images at a time to reduce costs between major shoots. For hotels with restaurants and bars, keeping visual content fresh and appealing is even more crucial. There is usually an expectation that guests will review the restaurant’s menu (and images of the dishes) prior to visiting. This affects their decision on where to dine for their next meal. Impactful photography can be achieved by hiring a local F&B photographer or training a hotel team member to capture new menu items, specials and events.

In my experience, there are a few common mistakes to avoid when capturing and implementing hotel photography. It’s pivotal to engage the on-property teams and to do your research when hiring a photographer. This is not only important for continued relationship building for new amenities or renovations, but also to ensure that their style matches the brand requirements and general ambiance of the property. Furthermore, it’s essential to approve locations, angles, and subjects before shooting, while carefully considering the target markets and audiences.

The Future of Property Photography

Technology continues to evolve and, with it, our options for photography do as well. As phone cameras continue to improve, training property team members to shoot composed photos and perform basic editing can be a game-changer. This allows hotels to capture high-value social content in real-time and at a moment’s notice, saving money and the hassle of booking a photographer. On the flip side, immersive media is becoming standard for many hotels, and hiring a professional photographer within the management company to travel to multiple hotels each month can be a cost-effective way to maintain high-quality visual content while still making a splash.

Overall, property photography is a powerful tool in crafting a hotel’s brand image and identity. By investing in high-quality photography and leveraging immersive media, hotels can create compelling visual stories that attract and engage potential guests, ultimately driving bookings and enhancing guest satisfaction.

Reprinted from the Hotel Business Review with permission from http://www.hotelexecutive.com/.