When your potential guests are looking online to choose a hotel to book for their stay, the first impression they have is the photos on your Hotel’s Website or online booking portal profiles. These potential guests will scroll through the photos and decide whether your hotel looks clean, stylish, welcoming and comfortable and whether it offers good value for the price. This is why it is important to have high quality photos of your hotel online, so that you can show off your rooms in their best light.
You might have a beautiful hotel with great rooms, but if they are not photographed well you will be selling yourself short. Great photos can really make a difference and can encourage your guests to make a booking. Here are some tips that you can use to take better photos of your hotel lobby and hotel rooms.
Use a Decent Camera
Get your hands on a decent camera so that you can take good quality photos of your hotel, a cell phone camera is just not good enough. A decent digital camera with at least five megapixels will be enough to take the photos you need. If you don’t own a camera like this, perhaps borrow one from a friend for the day or use Professional Photography Firm.
Take a Photo from the Corner
When you take a photo from the doorway of the room you will not be able to capture all of the space in the room and the angle can make the room look smaller. Usually you will just get a straight on view of the big wall at the back of the room. However, if you go into the room and take a photo from the corner it will make the room look larger, allow you to see all of the furniture and make for a better photo. Try taking photos from every corner of the room to see which one offers the best view.
Use Natural Lighting
The best way to make your hotel rooms look better is to increase the amount of natural light, so open the curtains and let the sun shine in. Natural light always looks better and more welcoming than artificial lighting. This means that when you are choosing a room to photograph you should select the one with the biggest windows and the most sunlight. If it is possible you should try to shoot your photos at dusk or dawn. This will make the light softer and make the photos more flattering. Also, late afternoon sunlight can add a nice glow to a room as well.
Clear the Clutter
When it comes to taking a beautiful photo of a room, simplicity is appealing to the eye. Make sure that the beds are neatly made and the tables are clear of any debris and clutter. Even if you usually have a phone, notepad, menu and other items on the bedside table you might want to remove them so that the photograph looks less cluttered.
Use a Tripod
If you place your camera on a tripod you will be able to keep the camera steady, which will help to make the photos less blurry and will make your composition more controlled. If you have a digital camera you will be able to take a test shot to see how it looks and make adjustments for the final shot.
Turn off the Flash
The flash on your camera will never be able to light a room correctly and it will make a strange reflection in all of the shiny surfaces of the room. You might be tempted to use the flash to avoid a blurry shot, but it is much better to leave the camera on a steady tripod and have a longer exposure.
Shoot in RAW Mode
If you have a camera that is capable of shooting in RAW Mode, this will capture much more information. When a camera shoots in JPEG mode it will compress the file and lose some of the detail. This is done to save space on your memory card, but the solution is to simply get a larger memory card so that you can shoot all of your photos in RAW mode. When you are in the editing stage with the photo you will have a lot more information to work with.
Keep these tips in mind when taking photos of your hotel so that it will look more appealing online for your guests.