Inspiring hotel photos for more direct bookings

Hotel love at first sight!

A picture is worth a thousand words and first impressions count: To make your website visitors fall in love with your hotel, you need expressive, professional photos and videos. Where can you get them? This article will tell you!

Own hotel photographer often too expensive and time-consuming

The problem: a professional photo shoot with a hotel photographer requires long preparationspossibly. and last but not least is seasonalif you want to photograph outdoor areas. Do you have the time and money for a really good professional at your side? Is your house really individual and photogenic in every detail? Then then an individual photo shoot is the best solution.

Stock photos as a cheap alternative

In most cases, the reality is different: your website is as good as finished and ready to go live - only good hotel photos are still missing. Your budget is tight and not all corners of the hotel are really "photo-ready". This is where the offers of so-called stock archives. In them you can find hundreds of thousands of professionally shot photos on all subjects and at affordable prices or free of charge.
Because honestly: which guest will notice whether the tastefully decorated breakfast pictures, the cappuccino cup or the freshly made pillow were really photographed in your house? It is precisely for such symbolic images that the offers of the picture agencies are suitable for visually enhance your website and make you want to make a booking.

Significant differences in image selection, quality and costs

The numerous picture agencies on the Internet differ not only in terms of quantity and quality of the images available. License terms and usage costs are also often very different. Paid agencies, including iStock, Shutterstock and Getty Images, offer various price and subscription models. A direct cost comparison is difficult. We have therefore compiled an overview of the most popular stock photo agencies and pricing models in the table below.Tip: Subscription models can be worthwhile for you if you need new images over a longer period of time, for example for newsletter or social media marketing. If you only need images for your new website once, a "free" trial month, such as the one offered by Shutterstock, is sufficient.

Free images for your hotel website

But why should you pay for your Holtel pictures at all? Especially when it comes to symbol photos, you can also find more and better more and better hotel pictures in free image databases. We have also put together an overview of the providers with the best stock on the subject of hotel photography.

From us to you: 

Your overview of the most important image databases and their cost models

Pexels

German company with more than 11,000 free hotel pictures. Our favorite!

prices: free of charge.

Licenses: License-free digital use. Photos can be edited. As a small thank you, the photographer can be mentioned via ©.

https://www.pexels.com/de-de/

Unsplash -Photos for everyone

International image database with over 4,000 impressive and high-quality hotel images. Open Source.

Prices: free of charge.

Licenses: license-free use online/offline.
https://unsplash.com

Shutterstock

One of the largest databases in the world with more than 350 million photos, free trial account, image search function and 24/7 customer service.

Pricing10 free images within the 30 day trial period.

Subscription: 10 pictures from 29 €/ month

Licenses: license-free use. The prices refer to standard licenses for online/offline use.

Payment options: Credit card or Paypal.

https://www.shutterstock.com/de/home

Getty Images

The world's best-known photo agency for visual communication with the largest database of editorial photos.

Prices: small, medium, large images from €150 depending on size.

Alternatively: 5-picture package from € 675.

Licenses: Packages refer to royalty-free images (online/offline use). Editorial images are always subject to license.

Payment options: Credit card.

https://www.gettyimages.de

Pixabay

International website for free photos, videos and illustrations. The database contains more than 2.2 million photos - including beautiful hotel and city images.

prices: free of charge.

Licenses: free commercial use.

https://pixabay.com/de/

iStock by Getty Images

iStock - formerly iStockphoto - is an international stock photo agency for photos, graphics, videos and audio files.

Monthly subscription (basic package): 10 pictures from 35 €/month

Annual subscription (basic package): 10 pictures from 25 € /month

Licenses: Multiple use with standard license. Online/offline advertising. Customizable photos.

Payment options: Paypal, credit card.

https://www.istockphoto.com/de

Photocase

German photo agency with hundreds of high-quality and authentic hotel motifs.

Prices: from 13 €/picture. Credit packages available.

Licenses: Worldwide and unlimited use. Attention! Picture credits are required for the basic license! For use without picture credits: 70 €/picture.
Payment options: Paypal, credit card, bank transfer.

https://www.photocase.de

Large selection of free images: hellohotel recommends Pexels

Our favorite among the free image databases is Pexels. Not only are all images here free of charge and license-free. The more than 11,000 impressive hotel images form, in our opinion, the most beautiful and extensive collection on this topic. You will find motifs for all areas of your website - from hotel room photos, hotel reception, to pictures in the restaurant, wellness area or at the breakfast buffet.

With hellohotel Search for images and insert them directly into your website

If you have your website with hellohotel.io and want to access the photos from Pexels, we offer you a particularly easy way. You can directly in the layout area of hellohotel to access the Pexels search engine, search for and select your desired images without switching programs and integrate them into your page layout with a single click. Magic, isn't it? But of course you can also easily upload your own images or images from other photo archives to your hellohotel-page via upload.