How to take better photos of your property
Key takeaway: you must make sure photos are of good quality, are at least 24 in number (per property), and respect guidelines.
Have you recently added photos but they’re not yet showing on your page? Take a look at the tips below to find out possible reasons why some photos are not displayed on our website.
Your photos are not of high enough quality
The extranet photo tool detects and blocks photos of low quality – those which are too blurry, too dark, too light or over-pixelated. We recommend a minimum resolution of 1280 by 900 pixels (1.15 megapixels) to ensure guests get the best possible impression of your accommodation, helping to improve your conversion rates.
In order to present your property to potential guests in the best possible way, we only display photos larger than 300 x 300 pixels.
You’ve uploaded more photos than we can display
We’re constantly testing which photos encourage guests to book and we know that customers like to see a minimum number of 24 photos per property. Our research has shown that there is an ideal maximum number of photos on a page — that’s why we’ll only show the first 45 in your photo gallery.
Your photos contain watermarks or logos
We recommend adding photos without any logos, watermarks or text. This can distract from the image and may make a potential customer leave your property page. Please also be aware that you must respect Booking.com photography guidelines.
Key takeaway: property photography plays an important role in helping guests choose a place to stay. In order to make the most of your photos, you must respect our guidelines, and where possible leverage our best practices.
Photography guidelines
A conveniently selected and fit-for-purpose property photo gallery can be a driving factor for guests choosing their next place to stay. To help you with your photo gallery, we’ve put together this set of guidelines:
- Keep photos travel-related and useful to guests:
Choose photos that show your property's most relevant features to set accurate expectations for potential guests, such as:
- Facilities and services available at your property
- Decor, location, and surroundings
- Your security features
- Demonstrable cleanliness measures in place, both at room-level and at property-level
- Global, regional and local cleanliness or safety badges, logos, watermarks, certificates in any local language or English whether issued by government agencies or by industry certification bodies
- Regional and local logos, badges, watermarks, vouchers, certificates related to COVID-19 government recovery policies in any local language or English
- If applicable, your Booking.com awards
Note that we will remove all photos that contain promotional information that encourages direct contact and direct booking. This includes photos about rates, discounts or services, property contact information such as email addresses, phone numbers, websites, QR codes.
- Always be appropriate for a global audience:
Help your future guests to get the most out of your property photos by featuring quality content that is appropriate for our global audience. We will remove photos that depict unlawful content, illicit materials, and graphic violence.
Additionally, we will remove any and all photos depicting or indicating discrimination on any grounds, profanity, indecent nudity of subjects regardless of their age, and sexually implicit or explicit content depicting subjects in main focus.
Lastly, note that we will remove any photos depicting misleading information that can lead to harming guest’s health and safety, or breach our animal welfare standards.
- Be yourself - original and genuine:
Only upload photos you are entitled to use, either because you took them yourself, you have received official permission from the photographer or owner, or have otherwise purchased suitable licensing to use them.
Always refrain from using images for which you do not own the copyright. This is illegal, and any photos uploaded without proper permission, licensing or copyright will be removed either automatically by our moderation colleagues, or at the request of the owner(s) of the photos you have uploaded.
- Be respectful of people’s privacy:
Photos of your property are more helpful to potential guests than photos of a person’s private information - so always refrain from using photos that include any personal data.
Personal data in this context can mean photos taken with surveillance devices depicting guests located in areas of your property where people have reasonable expectations of privacy (for example: bathrooms, bedrooms, changing rooms, saunas).
Note that any and all photos taken under such circumstances, that are uploaded without the explicit permission of the people they are depicting, will be removed at their request.
Based on our Property Photo Moderation Guidelines, the below table can give you an accurate understanding of what is allowed and what is not when it comes to photography.
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Relevant examples that we have found include: Image ![]() |
Relevant examples that we have found include: Image ![]() |
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Relevant examples that we have found include: Image ![]()
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Relevant examples that we have found include: Image ![]()
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Relevant examples that we have found include: Image ![]()
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Relevant examples that we have found include: Image ![]() |
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Relevant examples that we have found include: Image ![]() |
Relevant examples that we have found include: Image ![]()
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Tip: Not sure what photo to choose? Ask other property owners for advice by starting a conversation in the Partner Community.
Many of our most active partners in the Community have been running properties for years - they’ve achieved some high scores with their properties. This is your chance to learn from the best.
Best practices
Using information taken from our ongoing research, we’ve created property or hotel photography guidelines to provide you with suggestions on taking the perfect photo – and the optimal number of hotel or rental property images that attract more guests and increase bookings.
What photos do I need for my hotel?
What photos do I need for my home, apartment or holiday rental?
What photos do I need to attract more families to my property?
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Your property page content
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- How can I create the perfect property page?
- How to change or update your property address
- How can I change my contact details?
- Changing your property description
- How can I update my property's facilities?
- How can I add information to ‘The fine print'?
- How can I change information about my internet connection?
- How to rename your property listing title
- How can I change my position on the map?
- How to let your guests know when a facility is temporarily closed?
- All you need to know about quality ratings
- How do I get my property’s map coordinates from Google Maps?
- How to show guests what I do to protect them in regard to coronavirus?
- Updating your sustainability practices
- Guest Q&A feature
- Displaying cleanliness measures
- What is the Work-Friendly Programme?
- How to update check-in services
- Optimising the traveller search experience to boost visibility
- How to use the room differentiation tool to generate more high-value bookings
- Updating your swimming pool facility details
- Updating your property page
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- What photos do I need for my home, apartment or holiday rental?
- What photos do I need to attract more families to my property?
- What photos do I need for my hotel?
- What are guest-generated photos?
- How do I add, change and update my photos?
- How do I rotate photos?
- Why are some photos not showing on my page?
- How to take better photos of your property
- How can I add photos of specific rooms or units?
- How can I tag my photos?
- Understanding the smart ordering feature
- How can I change my main photo?
- How can I change the order of my photos?
- How can I delete a photo?