Luxury Hoteliers Magazine 3rd Quarter 2018 | Page 17

3. Avoid requesting a large number of images. One of the most common mistakes to make is to require too many photos. Commercial interiors photography is a prolonged and meticulous process in which a very experienced photographer can take an average of eight to ten images per day. The reality is that all it takes is a single image to get you excited about visiting a location. Remember that there will always be one best shot of the space or setup. Moreover, by reducing the number of images a hotel requires, they might be able to fit into their budget a superior photographer. Quality will always beat quantity. 4. Avoid having virtual tours. The idea of having a virtual tour is fascinating at first. The reality is that most virtual tours cheapen the brand. Consider this; a photographer uses his years of experience choosing a viewpoint that would best suit a room. He then turns to artificial lighting to accentuate that viewpoint. All of this while trying to select the props that best suit the room while setting the best camera angle. Why hire an artist to assess all of these things and then to expose your customers to a raw version of the room with terrible lighting and in most cases distorted angles? Virtual tours are not very popular with social media, and even though they are not as hideous as they once were, they leave nothing to the imagination and therefore nothing for the traveler to look forward to. Hotel meeting spaces could be the only acceptable exception, in my humble opinion, so long as they are only available upon request. 5. Request liability Insurance. There are so many things that can go wrong on a photo shoot anywhere from a guest tripping on a power cable to an aerial drone falling on someone. A professional photographer should always have Broughton Hall Castle ILHA 17