
Increase the visibility of your accommodation by using photos and videos
Increase your visitor numbers with proven tips! Discover effective online marketing strategies, social media tricks and guest experience ideas in this article!
A picture is worth a thousand words! For the hotel industry, quality photo and video content has become of paramount importance, as it determines the first interaction potential guests have with the accommodation.
This first impression often takes the form of photographs or videos, which provide a snapshot of the experience guests can expect and influence their booking decision. High-quality photo and video material not only gives an image of the place, but also reinforces the brand image of the accommodation and conveys a message of professionalism and attention to detail.
The blog post includes advice; suggestions; marketing channels; metrics to measure the effectiveness of photo and video content; FAQs and prices.
As this is a relatively long post, we have prepared a table of contents:
We encourage you to share this post with a friend, acquaintance or business partner who also operates a property, so that as many accommodation operators as possible can get this comprehensive guide!
There are several types of online content in the hotel industry, each of which serves a specific purpose in presenting the accommodation offer:
Photos: They form the basis of the hotel industry's online content. They are often the first point of contact and can be used to highlight hotels, amenities and unique features for a moment.
Make sure to highlight everything your accommodation has to offer, from the rooms to the common areas such as the lobby, restaurant, spa and fitness centre. Embrace the unique architectural features, custom furnishings or panoramic views your accommodation has to offer!
Videos: Videos are a powerful tool to provide a dynamic and engaging image of your accommodation. You can highlight the unique experiences your accommodation offers or even share customer testimonials through videos. More details on this later in the blog post.
For videos, pay attention to pacing and storytelling. Videos should flow seamlessly from one area of the accommodation to another, creating a narrative that potential guests can relate to. Adding music can also help set the tone and mood.
Virtual tours and 360 degree images: With the development of technology, virtual tours and 360-degree images have become increasingly popular in the hotel industry. They provide a highly immersive experience, allowing potential guests to explore different areas of your accommodation at their own pace.
When creating a 360-degree tour, care should be taken to ensure that it is user-friendly and accessible on different devices. Highlighting key areas and adding descriptions can make the tour more informative and engaging.
Drone footage: The drone footage provides a unique perspective, giving a sense of the scene and its surroundings. This can include the size of the accommodation, architectural features, the scale of the landscape and other external elements such as swimming pools.
This type of photo and video content can be used on a variety of platforms, including your accommodation website, social media sites, email campaigns and booking platforms.
Photo and video content is designed to make potential guests feel as if they have already been to your accommodation.
1. Show the unique features: Does your accommodation have a rooftop pool overlooking the city? Perhaps rooms with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the ocean or mountains?
Make sure they have photos, videos and uploads on your accommodation's website, booking platforms and social media sites.
2. Emphasise the different types: From standard rooms to suites, show potential guests what they can expect in each room category.
3. Amenities: The amenities can significantly improve the stay of guests. Whether it's a state-of-the-art gym, a relaxing spa or a gourmet restaurant, make sure your amenities are featured well in photos and videos.
4. Location and environment: Guests are often interested not only in the accommodation itself, but also in the leisure facilities in the area. Include pictures and videos highlighting nearby attractions or the natural beauty surrounding your accommodation.
5. Use natural lighting to create an inviting atmosphere: Choose the angles that best highlight the space and make sure that all shots are well composed and tidy. Building a narrative or theme can help evoke emotion, making the content more memorable.
Involving people in the images and video can make the locations and accommodation more immersive, while close-ups can highlight detail and quality.
If you're looking for quality, eye-catching photo and video content to refresh your accommodation, then you can contact us here! We also publish your photo and video content, so all you have to do is enjoy the great results!
Photo and video content can be used in different ways across different marketing channels:
Website: High-quality content can be used to improve the look and feel of your accommodation website. This can include quality photos of rooms and facilities, videos showing unique aspects of the property, and 360-degree virtual tours that provide an immersive experience.
Social media: Photo and video content is key to attracting followers on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and even Pinterest.
Share eye-catching photos and videos that tell you about the accommodation and the experiences on offer. Regularly posting engaging content can help increase followers, boost reach and encourage potential guests to book.
E-mail marketing: Including high quality images and videos in emails can make them more attractive and informative, increasing the likelihood that recipients will click through to the website and book a room. Photo and video elements also break up the text, making emails easier and more enjoyable to read.
Online travel agencies: On platforms such as Booking.com or Airbnb, high-quality images can make your accommodation stand out from the competition, and Booking.com, Airbnb and Expedia use algorithms that favour accommodation with professional photo content and elements, resulting in higher search rankings. We wrote about this in a previous blog post.
And if you upload photos showing different aspects of your accommodation, potential guests can get all the information they need to make a booking.
Online advertising: Photo and video content is essential for online advertising on platforms such as Facebook and other advertising platforms. High quality images or videos can grab attention, quickly convey a message and encourage viewers to click on ads.
SEO: Photo and video content can also contribute to SEO. Placing relevant keywords in the file names, alt text and description of images can improve the visibility of your accommodation website in search engine results.
In videos uploaded to YouTube, you can include keywords that will also help people find your accommodation more easily in Google search or YouTube, while they search for videos of nearby attractions.
Every marketing channel has its own best practices for photo and video content, so it's important to understand these and tailor your content production strategy accordingly. By leveraging photo and video content effectively on these channels, you can improve your marketing performance, attract more potential guests, which ultimately leads to more bookings.
To ensure that your accommodation's photo and video content reaches the widest possible audience, you should use descriptive filenames, alt tags and include metadata. These can help search engines to better understand your content and improve the visibility of your accommodation website on search engine results pages, as mentioned above.
Creating compelling photo and video content for the hotel industry requires creativity, strategic thinking and attention. By focusing on these areas, you can create an engaging online presence that will attract potential guests, improve your property's overall brand image and increase bookings.
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a picture of people can tell a whole story!
Including people in your photo and video material can help potential guests imagine themselves in your accommodation. Show people enjoying the amenities - dining in the restaurant, relaxing by the pool or enjoying the view from the balcony.
Of course, make sure you give a realistic picture of your accommodation. Overly staged or unrealistic images can create false expectations, which can lead to disappointment on arrival.
By highlighting seasonal changes, you can show potential guests the variety of experiences they can enjoy all year round. From the vibrant colours of autumn, to the mood of winter, to the lush greens of spring or the bright, sunny ocean and mountains of summer.
Seasonal pictures help to show the diversity of experiences you can have in your accommodation!
Relevance: Season-specific content can make photo and video material more relevant and attractive. For example, images of a warm, inviting fireplace or fresh snow on a ski slope can attract more attention in the colder months. And images of a sunny beach or a cool, inviting pool can be more attractive in summer.
Promotional opportunities: Seasonal photo and video content is an excellent opportunity for timed promotions or package offers.
For example, a winter-themed fabric can provide the perfect backdrop to promote a festive campaign, while spring fabrics can be used to highlight a 'spring break' package.
Boost your SEO: Season-specific keywords can help improve search engine rankings at different times of the year. For example, potential guests may search for keywords such as "cosy winter accommodation" or "beach resorts for summer", and season-specific content can help your accommodation website to appear in search results.
Keeping online content fresh: Regularly updating your photo and video content according to the season helps keep it fresh and dynamic. This can encourage guests to check back to your accommodation pages regularly.
User-generated content, also known as UGC (User Generated Content), includes photos and videos shared by guests on social media. They can be an effective addition to your content strategy because they provide an authentic and real-life picture of your accommodation.
If your accommodation has been tagged in these photos with a hastag or @ (which looks like 1TP5YourAccommodationName or @YourAccommodationName), you will be notified and can easily share this content on your accommodation's social media pages.
While it's important to have a variety of photo and video content in your accommodation, maintaining a consistent style and aesthetic is key to reinforcing your brand identity!
Consistent photo and video content will help build and strengthen the recognition of your accommodation. If every photo, video and graphic has the same style, colour and tone, viewers will begin to associate that particular look with your accommodation. Over time, they may even instantly recognise your content, even without seeing your logo or accommodation name.
This consistency should extend to all platforms where you share your content!
Trust and credibility: Consistency shows professionalism and attention to detail, which can help build audience trust. If your photographic and video content is consistently high quality, viewers are more likely to trust your brand and perceive your accommodation as credible and trustworthy.
A clear message: If your photo and video content is consistent, it reinforces your brand message and values. This can help potential guests understand what your brand stands for and what kind of experience they can expect to have in your accommodation.
Increased engagement: Consistent content leads to increased engagement. If viewers know what to expect, they are more likely to engage, share and follow your social media profiles.
Higher conversion rates: Over time, the increased visibility, trust and commitment that comes with consistency leads to increased conversion rates will be higher. If potential guests know and trust your brand, they are more likely to book a room specifically in your accommodation.
If you're looking for quality, eye-catching photo and video content to refresh your accommodation, then you can contact us here! We also publish your photo and video content, so all you have to do is enjoy the great results!
Photo and video content and its 'trends' are evolving and changing rapidly, so if you want to stay up to date, it's important to keep your content fresh and engaging.
This could include new formats such as 360-degree photos, videos or interactive content. Following industry blogs, attending webinars and keeping up to date with the latest research can help you stay at the cutting edge.
Measuring the impact of photo and video content can provide valuable insights into the effectiveness of your content strategy!
Here are some of the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) we use and which are used to performance indicators accommodation owners should also be aware of it to help them better understand the effectiveness of photo and video content:
1. Website traffic: Track the number of visitors to your website and where they come from, for example using Google Analytics. This can help you identify which content types or channels are driving the most traffic.
2. Engagement Rate: On social media, this can include likes, shares, comments and video views. High engagement rates may indicate that content is having a significant impact on the audience.
3. Click-Through Rate (CTR): If you use photo and video content, for example in emails or online ads, it is important to monitor click-through rates. This percentage shows the percentage of viewers who click on your content and then go to your website or a specific landing page.
4. Conversion rate: This is the percentage of website visitors who perform the desired action (e.g. make a booking). If the conversion rate increases after the publication of a new virtual tour or photo series, for example, it is likely that the new content is effective in encouraging potential guests to book.
5. Bounce rate: This is the percentage of visitors who leave your accommodation website without interaction after viewing a single page. If the bounce rate is high, it may indicate that your photo and video content does not meet the expectations or needs of your visitors.
6. Time spent on the site: This metric can indicate how engaging your content is. If visitors are spending a lot of time on a page with a video or virtual tour, for example, they are likely to be engaged by the content.
7. Social media growth: By tracking the growth of your followers on social media platforms, you can get an idea of how your photo and video content is impacting your accommodation's online presence.
A steady increase in followers can indicate that your content is engaging and encourages people to follow your accommodation's social media pages.
8. User-generated content: (UGC) The amount of user-generated content is a strong indicator of your accommodation brand and the level of satisfaction of your guests.
Some examples:
What do these hostels have in common?
Guests share content about the accommodation and its surroundings during their stay without being asked. This is a strong indicator of the strength of the brand of the above-mentioned accommodation.
On the other hand, all of the photo and video content mentioned so far can be found on the social media pages of the above-mentioned hostels, which are included in this blog article.
As the classic saying goes, "Learn from the greats."
The following metrics are important to analyse on social media platforms:
Like (like): This is a key indicator of how well your content resonates with your page followers. A high number of likes usually indicates that your content is appealing to viewers. However, this metric is somewhat superficial as it does not indicate deep engagement.
Comment (comment): Comments generally indicate a higher level of engagement than likes, as they require more effort from users. Monitoring comments can also provide valuable feedback and insight into the preferences and opinions of your page followers.
Share (share): When users share the content of your accommodation, it shows that they found it interesting enough to share it with their own followers. This not only shows deeper engagement, but also helps increase the reach and visibility of your content.
Followers (followers): This metric indicates the number of followers your accommodation has on a given platform. Increasing the number of followers can often help increase organic reach. However, it's important to also focus on the quality of your followers, as a small but engaged audience is often more valuable than a large but disinterested audience.
Engagement Rate (Engagement Rate): This is calculated by dividing the total engagement (likes, comments and shares) by the total number of followers and then multiplying by 100 to get a percentage. A high engagement rate is a good indicator that the content of the accommodation resonates well with the audience.
Click-Through Rate (CTR): This measures how many people clicked on the links in your posts. A high CTR indicates that the content is effective in encouraging users to take a particular action, which is particularly important if your goal is to generate traffic to your accommodation website.
Interpreting these metrics can help you understand what types of content are most popular with your accommodation's social media followers, and tailor your content strategy accordingly.
Regular monitoring and analysis can lead to better content performance, better audience engagement and ultimately higher conversions and bookings!
Even the best photo or video content can lose its impact over time! To keep your followers engaged, it's important to regularly update your accommodation with photos and videos.
How often do you recommend updating the photo and video content of your accommodation? You can read about this in the FAQ section at the end of this blog post.
If you're looking for quality, eye-catching photo and video content to refresh your accommodation, then you can contact us here! We also publish your photo and video content, so all you have to do is enjoy the great results!
As we look to the future, new technologies are constantly changing the landscape of online content.
We consider the following innovative tools to be the online content of the future and we plan to introduce these services:
Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR): These technologies are already in use to a certain extent, but are expected to become more sophisticated and common. VR can offer immersive virtual tours that allow potential guests to "experience" the services provided by the accommodation before booking.
AR can further enhance this by putting digital information into the real world, for example, when viewing a hotel room, you can instantly see information about the room's features.
Interactive content: As technologies evolve, there will be more and more opportunities for interactive online content, such as interactive videos where viewers can choose what they want to explore, or gamified virtual tours.
While this is a complete guide, we understand that there may still be questions about the production and use of photo and video content. Below we have collected some frequently asked questions that may provide further insight and help you understand the process of creating photo and video content.
Q1: How often is it recommended to update photo and video content?
It is advisable to update the content at least once or twice a year (winter, summer). However, if there have been significant changes to the accommodation, such as renovations, new services or the introduction of a new brand name, it is necessary to update the content as soon as possible to accurately reflect these changes.
And if you want to achieve measurable results, you need to post weekly photo and video content on various social media sites. It is often seen that some accommodation establishments post 3-4 posts per week on social media sites, so they are always in front of people's eyes.
Q2: Can I use stock photos for my accommodation?
While stock photos (images taken by others and available for purchase online) can be a cost-effective solution and, if there is no other option, are better than no content at all, they do not provide the personalised, authentic look that guests are looking for when choosing accommodation. The best choice is always original, high-quality photos and videos of the actual accommodation.
Q3: How can I make my accommodation visually stand out?
Highlighting the unique aspects of your accommodation, whether it's exceptional views, unique architectural details or outstanding amenities, can help differentiate your accommodation. One piece of advice is to always have an 'About Us' section on your accommodation website, as this will go a long way to building visitor trust. Also remember that quality is key - well composed, high resolution images can significantly enhance the external image of your accommodation.
Q4: How can I encourage guests to share their own photos and videos?
You can share user-generated content by creating a unique hashtag with the name of your accommodation without accents (e.g. #szallasodneve) and asking guests to use the hashtag in their photos uploaded to social media.
On social media sites, you can also organise competitions or offer discounts to guests who share their photos with a unique hashtag.
Q5: How much do these services cost?
We cannot give specific prices invisibly, as it depends on the size of the accommodation, the location and the needs of the client. However, we can give an average starting price to give you an idea of how much these services cost.
In general, the production of a video presentation of a complex accommodation in a guesthouse or small apartment building including drone footage starts from €500 (190.000 HUF), which includes the price of post-production, licensed background music and post-production modifications. However, it does not include the on-site delivery fee.
For larger accommodation, for example a multi-building apartment building or a bed and breakfast with narration and script, the starting price is generally €660 (250.000 Ft), which of course includes the services mentioned in the previous package, but excludes the on-site drop-off fee.
For hotels, we can only give you an individual price based on a preliminary assessment.
For one-off traditional photos and virtual tours, we can only quote a price once we have a floor plan of the accommodation, including the size of the accommodation, number of rooms and rooms.
For regular social media content production we always work on a monthly fee basis, as we go out to the accommodation every month or two to shoot photo and video content that can be used on social media sites, promotional campaigns and the website.
This is more affordable due to the monthly fee structure, generally starting at €400 (150.000 Ft) / month. If required, we will also advertise this content on the relevant advertising platforms to ensure that all content reaches potential bookers for an additional fee, and the price does not include the on-site delivery fee.
Q6: Can only Hungarian accommodation use your services?
No, because on the one hand we have worked in Austria, and on the other hand that's why we also print everything in euros, so that people who are Hungarian but have accommodation abroad and may live abroad don't have to change the amounts, just like people who read our blog posts in German or English.
Q7: Do you offer your services only to the hotel industry or also to the catering industry?
The two industries overlap, so we can offer services to both. For example, if you need photos and videos of gastronomy, feel free to ask us for a quote, we can provide you with lots of reference material!
Q8: How can I get a quote from you?
By filling in our quote planner, which takes on average 15 minutes to complete and you can fill it in here!
Photo and video content is an essential part of the hotel industry's marketing strategy. In an increasingly digital world, potential guests are likely to make booking decisions based on the photo and video content they see online. High-quality content can significantly increase the attractiveness of your hotel, helping to increase bookings as well as boost profitability.
Remember, photo and video content isn't just about aesthetics; it's a powerful storytelling tool that showcases your accommodation's unique offering and can tell its story in a compelling way. By understanding the principles and best practices of content creation, you can create a strong visual identity that resonates with your target audience and makes your property stand out in a competitive hotel industry!
Stay tuned as we continue to explore the ever-evolving world of digital marketing in the hospitality industry and provide you with the latest insights, trends and strategies for success.
If you're looking for quality, eye-catching photo and video content to refresh your accommodation, then you can contact us here! We also publish your photo and video content, so all you have to do is enjoy the great results!
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