Hotel Photography

For each room type, most platforms and websites want five to eight images. Photograph the best room of each type, and make sure what is shown is what guests book.

A hotel shoot has to fit around occupancy. Coordinate with housekeeping so the rooms to be photographed are empty, cleaned and styled with fresh linen in the morning. Block them out of sale for a few hours if needed.

Public spaces photograph best when they look lived-in but not busy: breakfast just after it opens, the bar before the evening rush. For the facade, blue hour — the 20–30 minutes after sunset when the sky is deep blue and the windows glow — is the classic shot. In the Netherlands that falls around 22:00–22:30 in late June and before 17:00 in December, so the date affects the schedule.

Turn on all lights in each room, open curtains, remove personal items and minibar price lists. Small styling details — a folded throw, two cups on a tray — make rooms look inviting in photos.

Booking platforms like Booking.com and Airbnb, and hotel review sites, each have their own image requirements and recommended sizes. Check the current guidelines of the platforms you use and share them with the photographer, who can then deliver in the right formats.

Your own website can use more atmosphere: people in the lobby, a couple on the terrace, detail shots. Lifestyle images with models need model releases and are usually quoted separately.

Aerial photos show a hotel's surroundings well, especially near the coast or in the countryside. Drone flights in the Netherlands are strictly regulated: operators must be registered, hold the right certificate for the drone category, and respect no-fly zones around airports (including a large area around Schiphol), over many city centres and in protected nature areas. In practice, drone shots in central Amsterdam are rarely possible. The photographer or drone operator checks the location first; never assume it is allowed.

Quotes to businesses are often excluding BTW; ask for an invoice in the company name. For the hotel restaurant, see restaurant photography; for holiday rentals and apartments listed for sale or rent, see real estate photography.

Guests book a place as much as a room. Photos of what is around the hotel help them choose, and in the Netherlands that often depends on the season:

• Near the bulb fields, between Haarlem and Leiden, a spring shoot in mid-April shows tulips in bloom nearby; the window is only a few weeks.
• On the coast at Zandvoort or Scheveningen, the beach in summer sells rooms; in winter, show the storms from a warm lounge.
• On a canal in Amsterdam or Delft, the view from the window is the photo; shoot rooms with a canal view on a bright day.
• In the countryside or at Giethoorn, show the water, bikes and quiet mornings.

Many hotels book one main shoot for rooms and facilities and a shorter seasonal shoot a few months later. The rooms stay the same; the surroundings sell the stay.