Choose images that work in a guide
Pick photographs that help guests rather than decorate the page, and avoid the ones that make a guide feel generic.
Updated
Images in a guide do one of two jobs: they reassure, or they explain. Anything doing neither is decoration.
Photographs that reassure
The cover image and one or two property shots tell a guest they are in the right place and set the tone. Use your own photographs of the actual property.
Avoid stock photography entirely. Guests can tell, and a generic interior undermines everything else you have written.
Photographs that explain
These are the ones that save you messages, and most guides do not have enough of them:
- The front of the building from the street
- The key safe, and where it is
- The boiler or thermostat controls
- Which bin goes out, and where it lives
- The parking space, photographed from the direction guests arrive
Take these with your phone. They do not need to be beautiful, they need to be recognisable.
Landscape usually works better
Guides are read on tall, narrow screens, but images are displayed across the full width. Landscape photographs crop more predictably than portrait ones.
Take them in daylight
A dark photograph of a control panel is worse than no photograph. Turn the lights on, open the curtains, and take it again if the first one is murky.
Fewer, better
Three photographs that answer real questions do more than fifteen showing every room. Guests scroll past decoration to find what they need.
