Visual Storytelling for Hotels

Preparing a presentation on social media and visual storytelling for the dotcomhotel conference in Prague we wondered what could be the best ways to promote your business in a visual way.

As we as an agency offer as well film and image video productions most of the times we get requested for full hotel & restaurant image films, event videos, product showcases, etc. So rather the big picture and project compared to what is available today on multiple platforms.

So we looked a little bit deeper on what kinds of videos are available in the market and what is typical for them. Actually a pretty interesting project! To get a better feeling of what is out there we compared established platforms like Youtube and Vimeo where most companies locate their full high quality videos with newbies such as Instagram and Vine.

The most interesting part has been the big difference on how to approach visual storytelling on these two different concepts.

Hotels & restaurants use these portals to showcase their businesses – mostly in detail and based on high quality productions. This allows the pictures to speak for themselves and results in emotion, dreams and planning helping within the travel stages ‘Dream’ and ‘Plan’. An interesting example for this can be found on Youtube produced for Design Hotels (TM) member 101 Hotel in Reykjavik, Iceland:

Since June 2013 Instagram, mainly known and used to share images quick and easy via smartphones, allows a maximum of 15 seconds for videos posted to the platform. Users can add a description, use tagging (location, hashtags) and share their videos pretty easily with Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Foursquare. The sharing functionality here is one of the most important features.

To showcase the ease of using Instagram videos we decided to create our own 15 seconds video. Certainly we as an agency have less visuals to tell our story, so we rather go down the sympathy track explaining in few pictures what we do – certainly with a smjle:

Vine, a subsidiary of Twitter, not supporting images. So the main objective are short videos with a maximum length of 6 seconds. Come again? That short? Exactly. That´s kind of the visual elevator pitch for Usain Bolt video producers! Again, users can add descriptions, use tagging (location, hashtags) and share their videos pretty easily with Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. Status Quo:

There are few hotels really using this new solution to their advantage, but already thousands of private users posting short videos from hotel lobbies, hotel views and further experiences. Certainly, the biggest part of this is not too useful, but when monitored in the right way some of them actually could be used as ‘Customer Testimonials’ and be shared with the wider audience of your hospitality business via Twitter, Tumblr or Facebook.

To showcase the ease of using Vine videos we decided to create our own 6 second video. It is really basic mainly showcasing how this works technically, but we hope you like it…

#apexducks

One of the hospitality brands already embracing Vine videos is Apex Hotels, a UK based hotel group which is pretty active in Social Media Community Management. They are doing a great job in creating, monitoring and sharing such videos. Here an example of one of their Vine videos including their #apexducks branding:

Well, to get started certainly a high quality video showcasing visually what you want to get told is the best option and should get most ROI longterm. But, as almost always there are different options and approaches. It basically depends on:

A. What is the defined goal of your video?
B. What is the message you want to get across?
C. What type of customer do you want to reach?
D. What are the platforms you would like to use for this?
E. How fast do you need the result?
F. What is your budget?

1. A nice and professional image video or image film production is the right tool when pitching for new customers, seriously showcasing your business and playing with emotions during the first stages of travel. The right platforms for this are Youtube, Vimeo and Facebook.
2. BUT, with limited budget, short time and quick buzz on a very specific topic platforms like Vine and Instagram can be the right choice. All you need is some creativity, one of the apps and a smartphone! Adding some life to it with background music or animation is certainly even creating more buzz, but as well more effort – we can help with that in case needed…
3. In case you want to reach a younger audience, want to promote an event location, parties you host, cultural events or arts as well Vine and Instagram could be the right tools…

Not sure how to approach these things, got two left hands or just not the time? Then contact us to brainstorm some ideas and generate some smjles under hej@opensmjle.com

Already generated nice examples for your business and would like to share them with us? Send us the links on facebook.com/opensmjle, twitter.com/opensmjle or hej@opensmjle.com