Instagram has come to hotels to stay
It was Instagram, with its beautifying effect on reality and its Amaro and Valencia filters the one that was making marketing directors and hoteliers salivate. It was Instagram with its position at the opposite end of the Tripadvisor candid photos. Yes, those photos that make even the Royal Mansour look ugly. It was Instagram with its cute attitude, but not as much as Pinterest, so sweetened. It was Instagram, gaining followers for days and provoking (almost) always positive responses. It was Instagram, with its ease of use and enjoyment, with his aesthetic vocation, with his desire for all of us to feel like artists.
Instagram has checked in to stay (a month or a decade, who cares?). It is useful for hotels and guests . The utility for the former is obvious: they launch a highly edited and highly filtered visual message, create #hashtags controlling the message, interact by massaging the ego of the followers and even launch offers.
The new mission of hoteliers is to make us dream with Instagram. And our mission is to make friends and followers dream. The Instagram of the Four Seasons and the Shangri-La make us dream. Model is the use that Grupo Habita makes of this tool. Who hasn't been moved when they read that they dedicated a @habitalovesyou.
But the excessive thing has been the use in the guests. We have not dropped the suitcase and we are already deciding whether to use the Kevin filter or the Sutro to share that fruit plate and those chocolates that we find as a welcome gift. And that instagram frenzy will not stop until the moment we check out, when we will take the last photo that we will title: I will return.
There are subtypes of images to upload to Instagram in a hotel. There are those with a messy bed, with more or less information. Also the breakfast ones: Instagram exists because the western world eats . Of course the views, ineffable them but perhaps more bland. Selfies are a classic; self-portraits are the expected share of a social network that knows how to amplify egos like no one else.
**If the hotel has a swimming pool, the delirium begins: we will bore the world with turquoise or green photos **. Hallways, like this one at The Halkin, are another must. Too much cinema behind us. Also welcome gifts. The bathrooms, unless they are those of the Palais Namaskar or those of the Downtown Beds, are not usually photogenic, so it is better to opt for the details.
Because, oh friends, It's in the details (and pedicures) where Instagram reaches all that it can be. . And details, in the hotels, there are many: what if the kimonos that they offer you in the Tokyo MO, what if a gym machine in the room, what if a Kenyan closet without a door or a walkie-talkie on a bedside table. And let's not forget the photos that others take of us and send us on Whatssapp so that we can instagram.
But, gentlemen of the hotels, rest assured. Although Instagram beautifies everything it touches, it is your hotel that will do all the work. Y a good hotel resists photos even from a photo booth . An example is my latest hotel, ** Café Royal **, in London. There one only wants to photograph marble, because the use made of this material is spectacular. And she could do it without a filter, with any camera. There is marble in the bathroom, marble on the walls, marble on the tables, on the stairs, to separate spaces… Life in Siena or Carrara marble. Crazy. Even if Instagram didn't exist, even if we revealed the photos (verb on the verge of extinction) and pasted them in an album (ditto word), that hotel would be claimed as something special.
Therefore, calm down: Instagram helps, it enhances the personality of the brand but, luckily, the hotel is still more important than the photo . Although every half hour we look at the mobile to see how many of our followers have liked the photo of a phone that we found in a corridor.