Virtual tours for hotels: turning lookers into bookers
By Charles Mansfield-Osborne ·
Guests choose a hotel long before they arrive, usually on a phone, flicking between your website, Google and a booking site. Photographs do a lot of the work, but they leave questions unanswered. How big is the room, really? Which way does the window face? Is the bar cosy or cramped? A 360° virtual tour answers those questions in a few seconds, and a guest who has already looked around is far more likely to book with you directly.
What a hotel tour should show
You don’t need every corridor. Pick the spaces that sell the stay and the ones guests worry about.
- Every room type. Show one of each, with the bed, the bathroom and the view. This is the single most useful thing a tour does for a hotel.
- The arrival. The entrance, reception and car park, so first-time guests know where they are going.
- Food and drink. Restaurant, bar, terrace and breakfast room, ideally at their best time of day.
- Reasons to book. The spa, pool, garden, a four-poster, a sea view or a historic fireplace.
- Events and weddings. Function rooms laid out as they would be on the day, with capacities in the hotspots.
At The Mermaid Inn in Rye, one of England’s most historic inns, the character is the selling point: beams, low ceilings and leaded windows that flat photos struggle to convey. We shot every scene in bracketed HDR so the timber detail and the window light both hold, which is what makes a tour feel like standing in the room.
Put a booking button inside the tour
A tour that ends with “now go and find the booking page” loses people. Place a Book this room hotspot in each bedroom scene linking straight to your booking engine for that room type, and an enquiry form in your function rooms. The guest who has just looked around is at their most interested, so make the next step one tap.
Where the tour should live
- Your own website. Embed it on the rooms page and each room type page, not hidden on a separate “virtual tour” page nobody finds.
- Google Maps and your Business Profile. Travellers search for hotels on Maps, and 360° scenes of your rooms and public spaces give them another reason to click through. See our Google Maps 360 service.
- Emails and social media. Link the tour from pre-arrival emails and wedding enquiries.
Why hotels benefit from owning their tour
Many tour platforms charge monthly per tour, and the tour disappears if you stop paying. For a hotel, whose rooms look the same for years between refurbishments, that adds up. Our tours include a year’s hosting and after that you can keep the files, so the tour keeps working for you. When you refurbish, we reshoot the changed rooms and slot them in.
What it costs
A small inn or boutique hotel usually fits our Signature tour (from £1,950, up to 40 scenes), which includes a branded interface, booking hotspots, a floor plan and Google Maps publishing. A single room-type refresh or a small guest house can be done for less. See how much a virtual tour costs for the full picture.
Ready to show guests around?
See our hospitality virtual tours or tell us about your hotel and we will suggest which scenes to shoot.