What Clients Want

 Just do a search for some of the major hotels and motels and see what they want. Hilton, Sheraton, Hyatt, etc. Also do a search for the type of hotel yours is. That should give you a real good idea.

I used to do photography for a company specializing in hotels, motels and resorts. They all wanted pretty much the same thing. Location, sometimes with a map showing the airport, Accommodations with a few shots of their different kinds of rooms, Meeting and banquet rooms, dining rooms and bars or night clubs, and if they were of the resort kind, stables, pools, tennis courts, golf courses and pro shop. Holiday Inn always wanted a picture of their sign on the cover of the brochure. I talked a manager out of that when I was first getting into it because I thought he should show a picture of the nice exterior of his hotel with all the palm trees and such. I had to drive 400 miles to shoot a picture of that sign so it could look like every other Holiday Inn brochure.

So, as with other clients, be sure to find out what they want. Hotel people are generally very nice folks. If you are in the business, even selling them stuff, they keep rooms for you at no charge, and like to socialize with you, possibly because they can't socialize much with their employees and guests. I used to have to hide when I got to Phoenix where we had so many clients, because managers would get their feelings hurt if they found out I was staying at another hotel. Same at Tahoe. Tell them I was leaving town and then move over to the next hotel.

Anyway, these people generally know exactly what they want and can give you a list. If you need photography they probably will have it, if they are any size, because they'll have a brochure. You might be able to get scans from the printer, or have them get them for you. One time I spent an entire afternoon between lunch and dinner, setting up to shoot the main dining room that was all glass looking out over the Pacific. I was using flash ... fifteen or more big #22 flash bulbs. It was quite a trick getting those flashes placed where they illuminated the room evenly and naturally, without creating any glaring reflections in the glass, but I did it, and got the balance between the beach and the interior with all the dining tables just right. It was a beautiful transparency. I was proud of it.

So I went to the hotel and showed the manager. He looked at it for about five seconds and said "There's a fork missing". I had to shoot it over. No photoshop back then to clone a fork.

:-)