Don’t be fooled by fancy hotel photography

Take a look at the two photos on this page. Believe it or not they are of the same room taken from the exact same spot. Granted one was taken in the daytime and one at night, but that doesn’t change the dimensions or aspect of the room.

If you were to decide which room you were going to stay at based on these two photos alone, which one would you choose? Would you suspect they were the same room?

The top photo was taken with a wide angled lens (10-20mm), the bottom photo was taken with a more “normal” sized 18-50mm lens. Because the shape of the 10-20mm lens is wider it is able to capture more of the image on the sides, top and bottom. This is good for when people want to show, and see as much of the room as possible. With the lens being concave, it makes everything in the middle of the photo look a lot further away than it actually is.

It is an old trick used by dodgy real estate agents when they are displaying ads for tiny apartments. How many times have you been lulled to visit an apartment by the creatively written description and photos that make the place look a decent size, only to get there and find the place is tiny?

If you want to avoid disappointment upon arrival at your hotel after getting your hopes up viewing beautiful photos on their website, keep a few things in mind.

• Verify that the room type you book is the one shown in the picture. Of course everybody and every property wants to put their best foot forward. But if you are looking at a super premium deluxe  private pool villa in the photos but book a superior room, the difference will shock you.
• Watch out for creative photography like photos taken from unusual angles, or photos with something other than the room as the focal point, like a bowl of fruit with the room in soft focus in the background or things like that.
• Because of the shape of the lens, photos taken with a wide angled lens are sometimes distorted, you may see this in any straight lines that seem warped or angles that look a little off.

I don’t use wide angled lenses for in room shots on this blog, or on any of my other sites reservethaihotels.com and NewThaiHotels.com because while they look great, I want people to know exactly what they are getting when they choose a hotel. (That, and I don’t actually own one )

One final note. If a hotel has pictures mostly of the surrounding area, or closeups of things like flowers, cups of coffee or other such stuff instead of actually showing the hotel, that is usually a pretty good sign that if they actually showed pictures of the hotel, nobody would book it. You might like to avoid places like that.