How much does a hotel promotional video cost?
A small guesthouse or boutique hotel film commonly costs roughly €800–2,000, while a full resort production with drone, multiple room types and facilities can run considerably higher still. What changes the price most is how many spaces need covering, whether you add drone footage and photography, and how many days of filming the property genuinely needs to look its best.
What size of property changes about the price
A small guesthouse with a handful of rooms and one common area can usually be filmed properly in half a day, which keeps the cost near the lower end of any promo video price range. A resort with multiple room categories, a restaurant, a pool or spa, and grounds worth showing off is a different job entirely: expect a full day of filming, sometimes two, simply to cover every space that guests will search for before booking.
Before asking for a quote, list the spaces that actually influence bookings: room types (a standard room looks nothing like a suite on camera), the restaurant or bar, the pool or spa, reception and any standout feature like a view or a garden. A quote based on that list will be far more accurate than one based on a vague brief.
Drone, photography and social cuts as add-ons
These three are the most common additions to a hotel shoot, and each earns its place differently:
- Drone footage shows scale, location and grounds in a way ground-level filming can't, particularly for a countryside or coastal property. With me it's €120 added to a shoot, subject to the flight rules at that location, which are worth checking with the local aviation authority before you plan around it.
- Photography of rooms, facilities and food gives you assets for your booking site and listings on platforms that don't accept video, and is a smaller add-on when booked alongside filming than as a separate session.
- Social cut-downs, short vertical clips of a room reveal, the pool or breakfast, reuse the same footage for Instagram and TikTok without a second shoot.
Filming time each space actually needs
Rooms film quickly once styled, usually 15 to 30 minutes each including setup, but styling them (fresh linen, tidied surfaces, good light) takes longer than the filming itself. Facilities like a pool or spa often need a specific time of day: a pool looks best filmed in the hour or two either side of midday when the light hits the water well, while a restaurant might need styled food, which is closer to a food photography brief than a straightforward interior. Building in this styling and timing means a realistic shoot rarely fits into two or three rushed hours.
A property with five or more distinct spaces to cover, several room categories, a restaurant, a spa, grounds, should budget for a full day rather than trying to compress everything into a half day. Rushing the styling is usually where a shoot's quality suffers most, not the filming itself, and it shows more clearly on screen afterwards than most owners expect beforehand.
Timing the shoot with the season
A hotel filmed in the off season, empty grounds, bare trees, no guests, rarely looks like the same property in its best month. Where possible, film when the grounds and gardens look their best and, ideally, with a few genuine guests around (with their agreement) rather than an eerily empty property. If your season is short, book the shoot early in it rather than leaving it to the last week, so there's time to reschedule around bad weather without losing the season entirely.
For drone footage specifically, weather matters more than for anything else on the shoot list: wind, rain and low cloud can all rule out flying on a given day, so build a spare day or two into the booking window if the aerial shots are important to you, rather than a single fixed date with no fallback.
Getting several assets from one visit
The most cost-effective hotel shoots plan for more than the main promo film: a handful of vertical reels for social media, a set of photographs for your booking platforms, and drone footage of the grounds, all from the same day or two on site. I filmed a short promotional piece for Saint Sofia Golf & Spa this way, and the maths is straightforward with fixed prices: a promo film from €790, drone at €120, and photography added to a video shoot at €90, rather than three separate quotes with three separate call-out fees. Full pricing is on my promo video page, and I look at how hotel video actually turns into bookings in hotel video and direct bookings.
Questions people also ask
How many rooms should we film if we have several room types?
Film your best example of each distinct category, standard, superior, suite, rather than every individual room. Guests booking online are comparing categories, not specific rooms, so one well-styled example per type is usually enough.
Do we need to close facilities like the pool to film?
Not usually, but a fully empty pool with no guests can film better than one mid-use, since it avoids awkward framing around people who didn't agree to be filmed. A short window with no guests, or guests who've agreed to appear, works well.
Is drone footage worth it for a small property?
It depends on the setting. A rural or coastal property with genuine grounds or a view benefits noticeably from drone shots. A city-centre hotel with little outdoor space often gets less value from it and might prioritise interior filming instead.
Need a promo film?
I plan, film and edit promo films for businesses myself, from €790, with a fixed quote within 24 hours.