More and more people are booking hotels online. the vast majority of customers use Google to find hotels in the cities they plan to travel in, visit for business etc. With such a competitive market, setting your hotel apart from the rest will help bring in more customers.
Like many things pictures sell. Customers want to see what their room will look like, and want to be able to see actual pictures from the location. Google has recognised that, and has now made it easier for hotels to get virtual tours.
Having a tour of your hotel provides you with a great way to show of your spaces. This tour is not just aimed at the general consumer, but is great for bringing in conventions and conferences to your hotel. The Google hotel tour is designed to quickly showcase the most frequently sought after parts of the hotel. The tour starts in the lobby, and gives the customer the option to visit the rooms and public areas of the hotel from the bar below.
With all our tour packages, we include Point of Interest photos of different parts of the hotel and rooms. these images are included with an unlimited usage licence, allowing you to use them to show off your hotel on more then just Google. The pictures as well as the tour are loaded to Google Maps, Street view, and your Businesses Google Page. This allows for greater visibility, as well as well as it can increase your search rankings in “Local searches”.
When search for hotels in an area, Google displays the top 3 results below the paid advertising, and above all the search results. When a customer views these, they will see the ‘See Inside’ button on your hotel. two out of three people will view the tour before moving on to the next search result. Below you can see the search results, as well as what it looks like if you select a hotel with a tour:
Once you click the ‘See Inside’ tab, you are brought into the hotel, and it starts you off in the lobby. When you want to see the other areas of the hotel you can select them from the image bar below the tour.
In the bar below below all the pictures for the hotel are shown, this bar also holds the different pieces of the rooms such as the Pool, Rooms, Public areas, etc. The bar also holds other images that you upload or the public uploads to your page.
Included in all hotel tours are single panoramic images for each room we shoot in your hotel. These images are a great edition to your website, as they give the customer the chance to see the whole room, and not just the photographers chosen angle of the room. Below is an example of a room panorama. It is easily added to your website.
The other big thing customers want to see with your hotel is pictures. A picture may be worth 1000 words, but pictures help sell more then any other tools. Customers do not only want to see pictures of any room but your rooms. With many hotels using stock photos, customers are not seeing your rooms, and are passing that on to other potential guests. With each tour package we offer 20 to 30 natural light pictures as you can see below. These images also include an unlimited use licence, allowing you to continue to use them as part of your marketing package for years to come. These images are not just of the rooms, but of all parts of your hotel. These are also loaded to your Google page allowing customers more images to choose from.
What is included with each hotel tour we do is:
- The tour its self;
- Room Panoramic pictures (1/room);
- Front lobby panoramic;
- Outside picture of the hotel
- Custom overlay; and
- Licence agreement for the images.
Not only will this our help get customers into your hotel, but it is a great way to improve local search ranking. Content and time spent on your businesses Google connected pages, as well as your website factor into local search; and are second only to user comments about your hotel. If you do not have nay content on your Google pages, there is nothing to help your ranking but customer content. take a look at your Businesses Google + page; I bet you will find customer content on the page. Now think about this, when future customers search your page, they see only the user generated pictures, and no professional pictures. These user generated pictures may be what the potential visitor makes his/her choice on.
These tours are not just on Google, but can easily be added to your hotels website. as you can see from the example below for the Governors Mansion Inn:
Or the tour with our custom overlay: