Your boutique hotel’s website, breakfast to nightcap
On Booking.com your hotel is one card among many: a photo, a score, a price. What makes it yours — the house, the welcome, the terrace late in the evening — won’t fit on the card. When a guest is torn between a few small hotels, they open each website, and yours has to say what the card can’t.
With Forest, the site becomes a day at your hotel, told in six of your photos: the front in the morning, breakfast, a room, the pool or garden, dinner, and the building lit up beneath the booking card. Each photo gains depth, the camera eases into it as the page scrolls, and the light runs from morning to night by the times you give.
Your booking engine carries on doing its job. The card at the end shows your rate from, and its button opens the page where guests book. Forest doesn’t sell rooms or take payments; its part ends where your engine’s begins.
What your site shows
The front, in the morning
First, your photo of the hotel from outside, in morning light if you have one. Over it go the hotel’s name, your headline and a sentence that places you — how many rooms, where, what sort of house. That sentence is also the description Google reads.
Morning: breakfast
In goes the breakfast photo, whether that’s the table laid on the terrace or the sideboard with bread and fruit. Over it, what’s served and until when, and whether it’s outside or at one long table in the kitchen.
Midday: a room
Pick the room that speaks for the rest and photograph it with the window in the frame. Your text says how many rooms there are, what sets each one apart and what you see from the bed.
Afternoon: pool and garden
The third photo shows what guests do without leaving: the pool, the spa, the shaded garden. The text has room for a drink before dinner and the hour the pool closes.
Night: dinner and a nightcap
Fourth moment: the dining room or the bar with the candles lit. Tell the evening at the hotel — the restaurant, a short menu, the hour the garden lights go off.
The booking card
The last screen is the card, over your photo of the hotel at night: your rate from, per room per night, from what time guests can arrive, a typical stay and the number of guests. Its button opens your booking engine, where dates and rooms are chosen.
Have this ready
- Six photos of the hotel, all required: the front, breakfast, a room, the pool or garden, the dining room or bar, and the building at night with its lights on. Each can carry a sentence saying what’s in it, for people who can’t see it and for Google.
- The hotel’s name and a short tagline: it appears above your headline and, next to the name, in the browser tab.
- One sentence that places the hotel: number of rooms, location, what kind of house it is.
- Your real times — breakfast, check-in, the pool, dinner — spread over four moments, with a heading and a short text for each.
- Your lowest rate that can genuinely be booked, per room per night.
- The link to your booking engine’s date-picker page, not your old home page.
- A few lines on who runs the hotel, and your profiles (Instagram, mainly).
- Company name, tax number, address, email and phone, for the legal notice.
Worth knowing
Times that double as information
Each moment carries its time in large figures, in your colour, and that time also sets the tone of its photo’s light. Use the real ones — breakfast 8 to 11, dinner from 8.30pm — and the day at the hotel becomes the practical detail guests go looking for.
A starting rate that exists
The rate on the card should be bookable in your engine on ordinary dates, taxes included. If your destination charges a tourist tax, say in the line below whether it’s extra. A slightly higher rate guests can find beats a low one they never see.
Shoot the room towards the window
For the room photo, open the curtains and shoot from the doorway or a corner, the bed in front and the window beyond: a near thing and a far one, so the depth shows. A bed photographed from above comes out nearly flat.
Say what the rate includes
Under the booking title there’s room for one line: say what the price covers, whether that’s breakfast, parking, the spa or pets. Someone comparing your site with a booking platform shouldn’t have to email to find out.
Questions
- Will guests see my actual rooms?
- They’ll see the ones in your photos, each turned into a 3D image the camera eases a little way into. It isn’t a virtual tour to move around in, and there’s one photo per moment, so you show a room rather than all of them. If your booking engine has the full gallery, the button takes guests there.
- Do the photos go through a server, and how long is the wait for the 3D?
- No server is involved: they’re prepared in your browser, reduced to no more than 2,048 px and re-saved without their location data, and the depth is worked out on the same computer. The only download is the model that makes the 3D, about 46 MB from promti.app, with the first photo. After that, a recent computer does all six in seconds; without WebGPU, reckon on 4–5 seconds a photo.
- Our best photos were shot for Booking.com. Can I use them?
- If your agreement with the photographer covers your own website, yes — and the original files beat copies from the platform, which are smaller. Each should measure 1,600 px or more along its longer edge. The 3D doesn’t improve a photo: one that works on your listing will work here, with depth.
- What about when we refurbish rooms or the season changes?
- Go back to the wizard in the browser where you made the site: your photos and words are still there. Swap in the new room — its 3D is made again in seconds — or change the rate, download again and publish the folder as before. There’s nothing more to pay.
- Does it replace my booking engine?
- No — it relies on it. Forest is the website; your engine keeps handling rooms, rates, availability and payment. The button on the booking card opens its page, so nothing you’ve already set up has to change.