How To Get More Views as a Hotel

Almost every hotel I look at is making the same mistake, and it's costing them a massive amount of views.

That polished brand film - the slow drone orbit of the building, the staff lined up beaming at reception, the voiceover about your "commitment to unparalleled hospitality" - is one of the least effective things you could possibly post. Nobody is stopping the scroll for it. Nobody cares. Good news: this is an easy fix.

I know it looks expensive. I know the GM loves it and it probably plays on a loop in the lobby. But "impresses the owners" and "makes a stranger want to book" are two completely different goals, and almost every hotel is chasing the wrong one.

Here's the part everyone forgets. Nobody books a hotel because the receptionist smiled in a video. People book because, for one second, they wanted to be there instead of stuck where they are. Let me show you how to trigger that on purpose, because it's the whole game.

Hotel Somewhere in Bali - Would be Great for a Reel

The Emotion You're Actually Selling

Every industry has one feeling that drives the purchase. For a restaurant it's hunger. For a gym it's the discomfort of being out of shape. For you, it's escape. That feeling someone gets at their desk on a gray Tuesday when they see somewhere so good they think, I need to get out of here.

That feeling is what fills rooms. And you trigger it almost entirely through the place, not your branding. The view from the balcony at sunrise. The infinity pool running into the ocean. The bath next to the floor-to-ceiling window. Breakfast on the terrace with the mist still on the hills. The light coming through the curtains onto the bed. These are the shots that make someone stop, stare, and screenshot.

So the filter for every piece of content becomes: does this make someone want to escape their life and be here instead? If yes, post it. If it's a logo, a smiling staff lineup, or a voiceover about your values, it fails. Sell the escape, not the brand.

Go Straight to the View

Stop opening with the building exterior and the lobby. I get why you do it. It's the "front door" of the hotel, it feels logical to start there. But a wide drone shot of a building isn't what makes someone want to escape. It's architecture. It's information. It's not the feeling.

Lead with the single most escape-inducing shot you have, in the very first frame. The view from your best room. The pool. The beach. The moment someone steps onto the balcony and the whole thing opens up in front of them. Drop the viewer straight into the fantasy of being there. Don't make them sit through your reception desk to get to the only reason they'd ever book.

This is exactly what a smart real estate agent does when they open on the front door swinging wide instead of talking to camera. You go straight to the experience. For a hotel, the experience is the view, the pool, the room, the escape. Put it first. Your brand, your name, your amenities list - all of that can come once you've already made someone desperate to be there.

Sell the Feeling, Not the Inventory

Here's the deeper shift. Most hotels post like a brochure. Here are the rooms, here's the gym, here's the conference space, here's the restaurant. That's an inventory list. Inventory triggers nothing.

Sell moments instead. Not "our deluxe suite has a king bed and a rainfall shower," but the feeling of waking up in that bed with that view. The first coffee on that balcony. The slow afternoon by that pool. Film it from the guest's point of view so the viewer can drop themselves straight into it. The most powerful hotel content makes the person watching feel like they're already there. Already on the lounger. Already looking at the ocean. Already in the robe with absolutely nowhere to be.

Do this and the viewer doesn't just admire your hotel. They want it. They feel the gap between their current Tuesday and the life in your video, and that gap is what makes them tag their partner and say "can we please go here." Same as the restaurant viewer texting "we need to go," except your trigger is escape, not hunger.

The Visual Travels the World

Here's the bonus, and for hotels it's a big one. A stunning view needs no translation.

A sunrise over an infinity pool hits a viewer in Tokyo, Lagos, Berlin and Mexico City exactly the same way, as longing. No voiceover filtering out everyone who doesn't speak English. You're speaking the universal language of "I wish I was there," which means the algorithm can push your content across the entire planet. This matters enormously for hotels, because your next guest could genuinely be anyone, anywhere.

A beautiful, language-free clip of your best view has a total addressable market of basically everyone with a passport and a dream. A voiceover-led brand film about your service standards has a market of "English speakers who'll sit through an ad." Lead with the universal, escape-triggering shot and you've handed the algorithm something it can push globally. That's how a tiny boutique hotel ends up taking bookings from countries the owner has never set foot in.

The Brand Film Trap

Let me name the specific trap, because high-end hotels fall into it the hardest. The fancier the property, the harder the marketing leans into prestige. Sweeping cinematic films, philosophical voiceovers, montages of staff polishing glasses. It looks luxurious. It also makes nobody feel anything except "this is an ad," and people scroll past ads without a flicker of guilt.

The luxury should come through in the quality of the real moments. How breathtaking the view actually is, how perfect the light is on the room, how good the pool actually looks. Not in how cinematic and produced you can make the edit. A raw, well-lit ten-second clip of your best view at golden hour will out-book a glossy two-minute brand film every single time, because one triggers escape and the other triggers "skip." You can be the most prestigious hotel in the city and still post like a human being showing off something genuinely great. In fact, that's exactly what you should do.

Let Your Guests Do It For You

One more lever most hotels ignore. Your guests are already making the exact content that works, and you're sitting on it.

When a guest posts a clip of your view, your pool, your room at sunrise, that's the escape trigger captured for real, by someone with zero marketing agenda. It's often more convincing than anything your team produces, precisely because it feels real. Encourage it. Build spots in your hotel that beg to be filmed. Re-share the best of it. "I can't believe I'm waking up to this" is the highest-converting hotel marketing there is, because it's the escape emotion delivered by a real person instead of a brand. Set up your property and your feed to make those moments happen and then amplify them.

What To Actually Do

Your next post opens, first frame, on your single most escape-inducing shot. The view, the pool, the balcony moment, in the best light of the day. No logo, no lobby, no voiceover intro. Film it from the guest's perspective so the viewer falls into the fantasy of being there. Keep it short and let the shot breathe. End on something equally good, so the last thing they feel is the pull to escape. Put your name on screen, sure, but never at the cost of the feeling.

Then ask the only question that matters before you post: would this make a stranger, mid-scroll on a boring day, want to be there badly enough to tag the person they'd bring? If yes, you've nailed it. If you're staring at a drone shot of your building, go find the view and lead with that instead.

Nobody books a hotel because of your logo. They book because, for one second, you made them desperate to escape their life and step into the one in your video. Trigger that, and the rooms book themselves.

Frequently asked questions

Why aren't my hotel videos getting views?

You're selling the inventory instead of the feeling. Nobody saves a video of a room. They save the view, the escape, the "I need to be there." Lead with that.

What should the first shot of a hotel video be?

Your single most escape-inducing frame - the view, the pool at golden hour, the thing that makes a stranger stop and want to book. Not the lobby, not the room tour intro.

Why do my brand films underperform on social?

The Brand Film Trap: they look expensive and feel like an ad, so people scroll past. Raw, envy-inducing clips outperform polished corporate edits almost every time.

Should I use guest content to promote my hotel?

Yes. Let your guests do it for you - their footage feels real and travels further than anything staged. Repost it, encourage it, build it into the stay.

Does location matter more than the video?

No. A great view filmed badly still loses to an average view filmed to sell the feeling. The emotion you trigger beats the property itself.

Let's get more views.

Remember, you can sign up for our free newsletter to stay up to date with my blog posts. Or, if you want to take it a step further and level up your game, you can join our Creator Quest - our $25/month platform with Masterclasses, a Gamified Platform and Powerful AI tools trained by Sergi Galiano (www.howtogetmoreviews.com/creatorquest). Let's get more views!

-Sergi Galiano