One day on site, fourteen days to a full content library — and the hotel's biggest direct booking week of the season.
A boutique coastal hotel with strong fundamentals and inconsistent social output. The goal: a brand film and reels series that could double as ad creative, plus a full editorial photo library to refresh the website and OTA listings.
The brief
The hotel's bones were strong — a beautiful property with serious press credibility — but the social output had drifted. Reels were inconsistent, the room photography on the website hadn't been refreshed in two seasons, and the OTA listings were running on third-party stills that didn't match the brand identity.
The owner wanted three things from one shoot: a cornerstone brand film for the homepage, a reels series the social manager could ship over the next quarter, and a fresh photo library for direct booking and listing channels. Budget was real but not unlimited — a single day on site was the constraint.
The plan
One day on site, planned to shoot photo and video together rather than separately. We mapped the day around natural light: rooms at sunrise, breakfast and pool deck mid-morning, exterior and grounds late afternoon, golden hour for the hero film. Every shot list item was tagged for end use — website hero, OTA, reels first frame, magazine spread — so nothing was captured speculatively.
What we delivered
- 1 hero brand film, 75 seconds — 16:9 web hero, 9:16 vertical, 1:1 social cuts
- 8 short-form reels (15-30 seconds each) covering rooms, food, pool deck, and arrival sequence
- 62 fully edited stills, retouched and exported in web + print formats
- Full SRT captions and alt text for accessibility and silent autoplay
- Custom-licensed sound design for the hero film
- Selects within 48 hours, full delivery within 14 days
The outcome
The hero film went live on the homepage three days after delivery. The social manager pushed the reels series over the following quarter — staggered to coincide with off-peak availability. The hotel reported their highest direct booking week of the season the week the third reel posted; reels reach across the property's account lifted 3.2× compared to the prior quarter.
The fresh stills replaced every image across the OTA listings within two weeks of delivery, and the same photo library landed in a regional travel publication the following month — a placement that would have been hard to earn with the old imagery.
What we'd do again
- Plan photo and video together, not back-to-back. The day yields more useable content because the camera moves through the same light once, not twice.
- Tag every shot for end use before the shoot. It saves a full re-shoot conversation later.
- Ship a hero film plus reels series, not just reels. The hero film is the asset that earns press; the reels are the assets that drive bookings. Both come out of the same day.