The most traditional hotel video is professionally shot and edited, and promotes the hotel or city. You should not attempt to shoot this type of video yourself because it will most likely be a lesser quality and appear to be low-budget. A great example of a promotional video is the Marriott Marquis Times Square.

The virtual tour videos are still very popular, and allow the guest to view the hotel as if they were walking through it. This type of video is often composed of a sequence of video images with music and narration. For an example of a virtual tour, see the JW Marriott Hotel Pennsylvania Avenue video.

You can create your own videos for your hotel. Many hotels are hesitant to create their own videos because they may be afraid of the technical aspect, or it’s just something they have never done before. However, hotel-produced videos are not meant to replace professional videos about your hotel, they are meant to be more of a communication channel and another way to drive traffic to your website. You could produce short video clips about special events at your hotel, interesting shops and restaurants in your city, or guest interviews. You can then post your videos on your blog and upload them to video sharing sites.
 
In a previous tip, we interviewed Juli Lederhaus, the General Manager of the historic Hawthorne Hotel in Salem, MA, about blogging. Juli also produced some great videos about the Hawthorne Hotel and Salem, and posted them on her blog and on You Tube. In one video she recorded Jim McAllister, a Salem historian, giving a tour of the Salem Marine Society. This video has received over 1,000 views.

Parallel to the way travelers are writing and reading guest reviews about hotels, they are also uploading and watching videos about hotels. Guests are no longer satisfied with hotel-produced videos, and they want to see the guests’ videos for the ‘real picture’. They know that hotel-produced videos only showcase the positive aspects of a hotel, and that guest-produced videos will show both the positive and negative aspects. Some guest  videos are taken with the purpose of creating a review, and others are more focused on an event at your hotel such as a wedding or a conference.
 
Guests can post their videos on video sharing sites such as You Tube, as well as travel review sites such as TripAdvisor. There are many travel related sites that feature guest-produced videos about hotels including Travelistic, IgoUgo, and Hotelly. Brooke Dowd of Luggage Online compiled a list of ‘50 Travel Sites You’ve Probably Never Heard Of’. Many of these sites also allow travelers to post their hotel videos. As a side note, Luggage Online is a good example of ‘pull marketing’ where travelers are drawn to the Luggage Online website because of the useful information and articles. Once on the site, users may be tempted to purchase a new suitcase!
 
Hotels should employ reputation management and monitor guest-produced videos about their hotels. One way to do this is to search on your hotel name in Google and then click on the ‘Video’ tab in the menu at the top. Google will display videos that have your hotel name as a tag. The results may show some of your hotel-produced videos and some guest-generated videos. Below is an example of the video results page for the Hawthorne Hotel in Salem, MA.

If you optimize your videos correctly, they can appear in the search results of Google for your chosen keywords. You can also place your videos on your blog, video-sharing sites, or in your articles.
 
Below is an example of how video increased the Hawthorne Hotel’s online visibility. We conducted a search on ‘Salem Marine Society’ and the Hawthorne video appeared as number 4 on the first page of Google (see below), and number 1 under videos. This means that someone interested in visiting Salem for the marine history, may see the Hawthorne Hotel’s video and decide to book a room.

According to an Official YouTube Blog post on October 9th, the site receives over a billion views a day! And as the Pew Internet & American Life Project reports, the share of adults who watch videos on video sharing sites has nearly doubled since 2006. Fully 62% of adult internet users have watched video on these sites, up from 33% who reported this in December 2006.*
 
* Madden, Mary. The Audience for Online Video-Sharing Sites Shoots Up. Pew Internet & American Life Project, July 29, 2009, http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2009/13--The-Audience-for-Online-VideoSharing-Sites-Shoots-Up.aspx, accessed on October 14, 2009.

A large percentage of your target audience is online, and you can reach them with engaging content, whether it be through social media sites, blogs, or videos. Videos are interesting to guests, and can also help give a human voice to your hotel.

If a video is very unique, people may send it to each other, send tweets about it on Twitter, or put it on their Facebook or blog. A video that achieves this widespread popularity is considered a viral video. The videos that go viral are often funny, dangerous or just plain stupid. One example of a video that went viral is called The Best Wedding Entrance Dance Ever and it has received 2,807,042 views. Some companies try to produce videos using comic elements in the hopes that their video will go viral. Companies who attempt this must be clear of their objectives and budget, as these videos can be expensive and there is no guarantee that they will be successful.   

Use a minimum resolution of 640 x 480 (4:3 SD) or 1280 x 720 (16 x 9 HD) for a wider video. Most cameras will allow you to set the resolution you would like or you may have to modify the video yourself.

Try to shoot with one light source. Mixed lighting such as Tungsten lights, florescent lights, and daylight together can affect your colors.
 
If you are shooting outdoors try to shoot early in the morning or late afternoon to avoid the direct sunlight which can be glaring and cause harsh shadows.
 
Film with the light source facing the subject, not behind the it which could cause a silhouette effect.
 
Use supplemental lighting if you need to. These can be handheld objects such as white poster boards. You could also record by light colored stationary objects such as buildings. With practice, you can learn to control the reflected light to reduce shadows.

Be aware of where you are filming and do not record in an environment with a lot of background noise. If possible use an external microphone which will reduce the ambient noise. If you are shooting outdoors enable a low cut or wind cut filter on the microphone.

It is important to keep in mind obvious things that people tend to ‘forget’ in the excitement of filming a video. If you are filming a person remember not to cut off the top of their head. Remind your subjects to be relaxed, speak up, and smile. Bright clothing and an attractive background will help as well.

iMovie is a basic program that allows you to crop, color correct, add music and create transition such as fade-outs. iMovie is installed in the Mac computer and is part of the Mac products, but you could you buy parallel software for a PC.
 
QuickTime Pro is another basic program that allows you crop your video and add audio.  You can also export your video to a format optimized for the internet, iPhone or iPod. QuickTime Pro is available for the Mac or PC.
 
Final Cut Express, a less expensive version of Final Cut, is designed for the Mac and allows you to create more sophisticated effects.
 
Adobe Premier Elements is a less expensive version of Adobe Premiere Pro, and is designed for a PC. This software also allows for sophisticated editing.

Many of the editing programs allow you to create banners with your name or logo on the video. Maintain your hotel brand voice and customize your banners with your logo and colors.

It is recommended that you export your video as .mp4 H264. This will give you high quality with a smaller file size than the equivalent Quicktime.mov format. Regarding sound, it is recommended that you use either MP3 or AAC sound encoding, with a sample rate of 44.1kHz. Also, use stereo sound, not mono.

When you upload your video to a video sharing site you must put your keywords in the title, description, and tags. Make sure the keywords used in your title also appear in the description.

It is important to use relevant keywords that you want your video to appear for. Below are some ideas on how to do this.

-Research the competition for related keywords, tags and descriptions.

-Use You Tube’s built-in keyword suggestions tool. In the search bar you can begin typing a phrase and You Tube will show you predictive text which displays popular search queries in order of search volume. Below is a graphic of the beginning of a search on social media.