Hotel Managers: watch out for these 3 essential visual factors when optimising your website
Through our experience in creating approximately 2 million pictures for the hospitality industry in the last two years, we have learned a lot! Besides creating visual content, we have also been investing time in analysing thousands of galleries and portfolios from the hospitality companies we worked with in order to gain more insight on the overall quality of photos. Based on our learnings, my team and I discovered there are three main struggles that hotels are facing regarding visual content and I will address these factors and how to solve them in today’s blog.
In a world where we are more informed and busier than ever, it’s crucial for your hotel to do whatever it takes to trigger and excite people to book with you.
Working as a marketing or branding manager for a global hotel brand like Hilton for instance, the focus will be much on engaging and connecting with your audience as well as trying to relate to their daily lives as much as possible.
If you want to draw the attention from your audience, you need to come up with compelling ideas, something that creates the ‘WOW’ moment. Guess what? Photography plays a vital role in this!
1. The first impression is the last impression
Important to understand is that the photos on your website make a big impact on your (potential) hotel guests. It’s what they see first when entering your website or when browsing on Online Travel Agencies (OTA) like Expedia or Booking.com. Your photos give the consumer the first impression, and this one has to be right. Otherwise, they might choose for your competitor.
“Think about it, the first impression that guests have of your website can ‘make’ or ‘break’ their purchasing decision!”
Just to give you an example: can you tell the difference between the photos on this front page
…and this one?
I guess you are nodding now, thinking ‘yes.’ Interesting here is that both hotels are in the same price class and are offering the same room types. However, the impression of each website and the use of visual content on the front page is entirely different. Remember: your front page is the first contact between the traveler and your hotel, be sure to have the picture that represents your hotel best as your main image.
2. Know who is visiting your hotel website
You might not see the direct link between photography, and knowing who your guest is and what he or she wants to see from your hotel. Well, let me explain:
The Ritz Carlton, one of the most well-known brand name in the luxury hotel industry, will expose different facilities on their website than a city hotel attracting creative and artistic people. Guests who are looking for a five-star hotel have different expectations from what is shown on photos than the ones that are looking to emerge in the creative atmosphere of a hotel lobby and are satisfied with just a small table where they can work on their laptop and drink flat whites all day.
Carefully consider your customer needs and wants and make sure you have photos that match accordingly. At briefy.co we call this creating an ‘effective visual content set.’
3. Good image quality is not an option. It is a must.
The fact that you should only upload images of high-quality to your website gallery might seem obvious to most of you, but I can guarantee you that many amongst us misunderstand this concept. There are a lot of hotels that have beautiful photos in high-quality resolution and get the most out of their hotel room. You would expect the room photo to appeal like this one, right?
Well, there are also some hotels that could improve a little here and there.
DIY hotel photo is a bad idea. We live in a tech-savvy world. While it may appear like a quick option consisting little marketing budget to take pictures of the room with smartphones, I strongly suggest each hotel invest in a professional photo shoot, to maintain the image gallery alive and up to date for the guests. Directly because, hiring a professional hotel photographer makes a massive difference in framing better your unique selling point.
At briefy.co, we have seen many of our clients benefit from high-resolution pictures and web-optimised visuals. In fact, in an interview I conducted with Akos Szucs, Pre Opening Manager of Grand Hotel Des Sabletes-Plages by Hilton, he mentions “hotel bookings went up by 150% after uploading high-quality photos.”
Your struggle is over — key takeaways for your hotel
“Acknowledge that you need quality photo content and keep up the demanding visual experience requirement from today’s guests.”
In an “I-want-to-get-away” moments for travelers — a.k.a. Your potential guests — it has become a standard that the visitors expect you to provide inspirational content that helps make up their minds to book your accommodation. The easy access to information makes travelers compare and find your hotel easier than getting a meal at 2.30PM in your staff canteen. Quality photos may not be the only thing that determines your success, but it is the basics to cover.
Despite the importance of user-generated content such as the guest’s cellphone photos of your room, the mobile-taken quality just does not come close to the professional standards that your hotel deserves; not to mention who will do the image post-production. You want guests to see images that reflect your hotel charisma, which shows your quality service and exclusive rooms equally. Am I right?
And if you just don’t have enough budget & are struggling with finding a reliable and professional hotel photographers in Berlin, contact us at briefy.co to test out a free photo shoot for a limited time only! #GiveItAShot
We’d love to know your ideas and feedback! Stay tuned for more blogs about how your hotel business can benefit from curated visual content.
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By Stefan Almuli, Hotel Partnership Team at Briefy.co
