Adding photos of your property

Good photography can capture beautiful, well-lit and realistic photos of your property. Your photos should show all the main rooms and features that will captivate and inspire travellers to book your property.

What’s in this article:

Guidelines for photography

To help you with your photo gallery, we’ve put together the following guidelines. For more tips, check out our step-by-step visual guide.

Keep photos property-related 

Choose photos that show your property’s most relevant features to set accurate expectations for your guests. 

Always be appropriate for a global audience 

Help your guests get the most useful understanding of your property by featuring quality content appropriate for a global audience. We will remove any photos: 

• That contain promotional information that encourages direct contact and booking
• That depict unlawful content, illicit materials and graphic violence. 
• That depict or indicate discrimination on any grounds, profanity, indecent nudity of subjects regardless of their age and sexually implicit or explicit content depicting subjects in the main focus
• That depict misleading information that can lead to harming guests' health and safety or breach our animal welfare standards

Get permission

Only upload photos you have consent to use because you either took them yourself or have permission from the photographer or owner, or you’ve purchased suitable licensing to use them.

Be respectful of peoples’ privacy 

Photos of your property are more helpful to potential guests than photos of a person’s private information, so refrain from using photos that include any personal data.

Personal data in this context can mean photos taken with surveillance devices depicting guests in areas of your property where people have reasonable expectations of privacy, for example bathrooms, bedrooms, changing rooms and saunas.

Taking photos of your property

Interior

Show off your property by taking photos from several angles. Take at least four photos of each room or unit and at least one photo of your bathroom and toilet.

Exterior 

When booking accommodation, travellers want to see a clear and realistic representation of a property and its location. That's why you should take photos of the exterior that show:

• The property’s entrance 
• The building's facade in relation to the street or its vicinity

Rooms or units

All photos should be consistently clear, bright and flattering, so prepare and tidy your rooms before taking any photos. Your rooms or units should have:

• Curtains open, so views are visible
• Ambient lighting and lamps turned on
• Freshly made beds
• Tidy surfaces
• Spotless carpets and flooring
• No laundry showing
• No wires and cables visible

Also, take photos of any in-room amenities such as:

• Tea and coffee
• Refrigerators
• Air-conditioning units
• Glasses and mugs
• Minibar/snacks 
• In-room safe
• Desk/stationary

Bathrooms and toilets

Bathroom photos are just as important to travellers as they often reflect the general cleanliness of the property. Your bathrooms should have:

• Ambient lights turned on 
• Clean mirrors 
• Spotless showers/bathtubs
• Shower curtains open
• No tissues, toilet paper or bins visible
• Closed toilet lids

Also, take photos of any in-room amenities such as:

• Bathrobes
• Slippers 
• Hairdryers
• Toothbrush kits
• Complimentary toiletries

You can also take photos of unique features such as:

• Views from the property
• Balconies, patios or terraces
• Interesting architectural or design features 
• Gardens
• Parking facilities

Common facilities 

You can take photos of common or shared facilities that guests have access to at your property, such as:

• Entrances – both interior and exterior
• Street views of the building and its surroundings
• The reception area
• Restaurants 
• Breakfast spreads
• Lounges
• Swimming pools
• Game rooms
• Spa, sauna or massage facilities and services
• Fitness centres
• Nearby beaches
• Kitchen facilities
• Living areas

Additional amenities or services

You should take photos of any additional amenities or services available to your guests, such as:

• Meeting rooms or banquet halls
• Business centres or lobby computers
• Airport shuttle buses
• Parking facilities
• Luggage storage
• Dry cleaning or laundry services
• Room service
• Tour or ticket desk with pamphlets

Aparthotel 

If you have an aparthotel, make sure that you take photos of:

• All the apartment types 
• The different rooms in each apartment unit as well as the whole apartment
• Take a minimum of 24 photos

Taking photos to attract families

Families seek specific facilities, amenities and services in a stay. So, take photos of the following if you have them:

• Kids club facilities
• Outdoor play areas
• Waterslides or waterparks
• Children’s swimming pools
• High chairs
• Cribs
• Kitchens or kitchenettes
• Excursions services, ie: pamphlets in the lobby
• Sports facilities
• Safety features like pool fences or stair gates
• Any other family-friendly facilities

Requirements for photography

Keep the following general and technical requirements in mind when taking photos of your property.

Shooting requirements

• Use a digital camera or smartphone that has a good camera
• Shoot landscape images (horizontal) only =- these look best on our platform
• Photos must have a high resolution, at least 2048 x 1080 pixels but preferably 4000 x 3000 pixels
• Take a minimum of 10 photos
• Take pictures from a height of 100 to 160 cm
• Shoot from room corners to add perspective and depth to your images

Technical requirements

To ensure your property photos are optimally displayed to potential guests, it’s best to avoid uploading:

• Grainy or pixelated photos 
• Blurry or tilt-shift photos
• Over-processed photos
• Photos with filters, strong contrast, over-saturations or excessive HDR
• Photo collages
• Watermarks or illustrations in photos
• Skewed, tilted, stretched or distorted photos
• Black-and-white photos
• Extreme wide-angle or fisheye lens photos

Composition

When it comes to composition, factors such as orientation, photo size, layout, and symmetry are crucial. Keep the following in mind:

• Make sure your subject – for example, a person or amenity – is in the centre of the image whenever possible
• You can crop photos on our platform to keep your subject centred
• Don't get too close to the subject – allow enough distance for the subject to fit in the middle of the frame
• Remember that the image you see in your extranet gallery is a pre-cropped photo

Avoid taking pictures of road signs, parked cars, and make sure no recognisable people are present.

Things to avoid

When taking photos, make sure you avoid the following:

• Photos of guests, models or property owners 
• Photos displaying nudity 
• Photos of logos, branding, awards or contact details 
• Reflections of people in mirrors and windows 
• Photos with TVs and computers turned on 
• Photos showing technology that may become outdated, such as alarm clocks and telephones