Marriott Hotels & Resorts
I am extremely lucky to be one of a few selected brand hotel photographers for Marriott Hotels & Resorts’ premium collection. This means I am a “Marriott Approved Photographer” specially selected to shoot their higher tier brand design hotels, such as the Westin, Tribute Portfolio, Marriott, Le Meridien, Autograph Collection Boutique Hotels and so on.
Now, I love to travel and am fortunate to do so for my work. I have traveled extensively across Asia covering China, South Korea, Japan, Thailand, Singapore and Australia.
Hotel Photography
This is not only the hotel exterior and lobby, but also includes all the amenities that are part of the guest experience when they come to stay at your property, namely the bar, private dining experience, kids club, the pool and the spa.
The hope is to bring guests out of their rooms and into other sections of the hotel to spend more time and enjoy their stay.
I like to work very closely with the General Manager and owner to determine which areas we should focus on. Who are their clients? Is it a business hotel, where we should push lounges, bars and dining experiences? Or is it a holiday destination where the swimming pool, the spa and the kids club may play a bigger role in your guests’ resort selection?
Catching the right moment of the day to shoot these images is important. While we may want a hotel exterior to be at dusk or dawn for that “hero” feeling, we will likely want to shoot other locations with bright and warm sunlight flooding in.
Hotel Room Photography
The priority of most hotel photography assignments is to showcase the hotel property and the rooms, so people can more easily make their decisions as they peruse all their choices online before they travel to new destinations.
Working with Marriott brands over past years has been a wonderful experience as their team works closely with me to make sure we can get the best results for their property owners and their own brand.
For best results, we work with housekeeping on the hotel property and usually bring our own stylist for the shoot. Making beds look good in photos can be especially challenging so I recommend working with an experienced interior stylist. It not only involves a fair amount of steaming, but also strategically placed duct tape, cardboard and pins to make everything look dreamy.
As one of the most important assets for a hotel, for room shoots I usually recommend a day to review the property and the rooms and make a schedule for the best times (sun position) to shoot certain rooms.
The Experience
Though lifestyle images are the smaller part of most of our shoots, they play an equally important role to the other images we create for each and every hotel.
This is all about the guest experience, where we can showcase specific scenarios for your guests. It might be a family jumping into the swimming pool, a couple having a romantic dinner, or someone taking advantage of the hotel fitness centre.
To create these images we can work with professional models as well as staff acting as guests. We enroll the help and support of a hair and make-up stylist as well as a wardrobe stylist. For many of our assignments with Marriott brand owners of Premium hotels, the look of the models in front of the camera is extremely important, so we spend more time on these images to make sure they are just right.
A good example of this is the work we did with Westin Hotels in Asia who wanted to create 3 short videos to showcase their lifestyle philosophy with hotels geared towards wellness and fitness. Scroll to the bottom of the page for one of those videos, or visit the video project page here.
An important element I look to capture on every assignment is the destination. In most cases, guests are coming to your property as part of a desire to travel, to explore and to experience. What’s interesting to do near your property? Are there any cultural festivals? Sites to visit? Or activities to participate in?
