Hotel Photographers – professional quality can equal more sales

As a hotel owner, you’ve probably already dabbled in a little photography and taken your digital SLR on a tour of the grounds to take some photos and use them in various publicity shots or even your website. You may have been overjoyed with the results and given the quality of digital SLR cameras these days, it’s likely that you took some fantastic quality shots.

However, do they actually sell your hotel?

Hyatt Place – Austin Downtown

That might sound like an odd question, but think of it this way: Anyone can take a picture of a beautiful woman, but with the correct lighting, use of angles and background placement, that picture could become an award winning shot that makes it on to the cover of magazines.

Would your hotel resort photography make it on to the front of Time?

It’s obvious that there’s a stark difference between a ‘good’ photograph and an outstanding shot that is worthy of framing and this difference usually only becomes apparent when such an outstanding shot is put next to said good one.

The fact is, hotel photographers are used to finding the right place, the right time, the right lighting in order to get that outstanding shot every time as they do this every day, it’s their job. Professional hotel photography isn’t just something that can be achieved because you can afford a great camera, it takes years of experience and training. A great photographer will have an ‘eye’ for the right shot and will understand what time of the day your hotel will look its best.

It’s about checking the weather forecast, the direction of the rising sun and the time of the year and putting all these things together to find the perfect photo that will sell your hotel.

Of course, their skill doesn’t just stop there. Studies have found that hotels will virtual tours will sell more rooms than those without. This plays on the fact that for years the only way you could judge where you were about to have your overnight stay was by looking at the photos provided by the hotel itself and as we’ve already explained in some detail, a good photographer can make it look fantastic.

However, virtual tours give the website visitor the chance to look around for themselves. Again, if this isn’t done professionally you’ll find this can be a hit and miss affair. It’s not just a matter of walking around with a video camera and trying to cut all the scenes together later.

Much like still photography, you need to plan everything beforehand and make the rooms look their best before setting up the camera and then planning how it will pan. Sometimes they’re static cameras with lenses taking in the entirety of the room they’re in, the tour itself being stitched together in post-process and this in itself brings challenges.

This is no mean feat and a keen eye, attention detail and a technical understanding of the software is needed to ensure it looks fantastic.

Your hotel should be given the best chance possible to fill those rooms and so it’s important you make the best of what you have.