IHG

Globally, InterContinental Hotels have around 5000 hotels under various brand names, such as Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza & Staybridge Suites and most recently; Voco.

Creative Details

Organisations: IHG

Location: Voco Oxford Thames Hotel

Post Production: Simon Callaghan

The Campaign

Following a soft furnishings refurbishment to the hotels public spaces, IHG need a new set of high end photographs for their marketing and brand teams, covering both their refurbished and existing stock hotel areas.

The Photoshoot

A two day hotel photoshoot that needed three days. This hotel has a warm, cosy atmosphere from the cobbled Cotswold bricks, comfy furniture and inviting tungsten lighting.

To fit in with the hotels schedule and limited available staff, the spaces were photographed at less than ideal times of day. The art of a good hotel photographer is to solve these problems on site and still deliver a set of outstanding images for the hotel. 

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Hotel Photograper: Exterior Twilight Photography

Photographing the exterior photographs of the Oxford Thames hotel meant time outside, on a very cold morning and evening! My signature hotel photography is an exterior photograph, taken at twilight; they're captivating and eye catching photographs that give the hotel a hero photograph for their advertising. In the cold UK months, a photograph like this can entice guests to stay in this inviting hotel.

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Hotel Photography: Reception & Lounge

Having the opportunity to photograph this hotel lobby was a real treat. What a stunning place to have a hotels key public spaces. To make the best photograph possible, we split the room into three sections; bar, lounge and reception. In photographing this barn-cum-hotel, the two key features were the Cotswold stone - a quintessential feature for the local area - and the structural wooden beams that add so much character to this hotel. 

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Hotel Photography: Bedrooms

A key feature of the Voco brand is their yellow colouring dotted throughout the hotel. The Oxford Thames hotel bedrooms were fully refurbished with a wonderful modern style of big comfy furniture and bedding.

Thanks to the Housekeeping team who turned the rooms around at the last minute, adding onto their already busy work schedule.

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Hotel Photography - Wellness Facilities

The Oxford Thames Hotel has a full range of spa and wellness facilities and they're a huge selling point for the hotel. Good photography of these facilities will help attract day guests for spa visits; a huge added revenue stream to compliment the overnight stays.

Finding a time where the pool and gym was free from guests proved a little difficult, but thanks to some keen eyes of the wellness staff, we eventually squeezed in a moment to photograph this popular hotel spa.

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Hotel Photography: Restaurant

The brief was to capture a photograph of the restaurant to help promote the evening trade. Sadly for us, the restaurant wasn't available for us to shoot after dark, so we had to fake it.

Below is a  manipulation of a photograph taken during the day and made to look like a dusk/evening image. It took a fair amount of production and post-production work, but we pulled of something that's not perfect, but super close to an evening image.

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Hotel Photography - Conference Facilities

The Conference facilities were surprisingly technical to photograph. Small windows, low ceilings and long rooms create tricky conditions for modern digital cameras. A simple explanation is cameras are not as good as the human eye and our job as photographers is to recreate these rooms to look how we'd see it in person.

These facilities were not refurbished, but the hotel wanted high quality photography of this huge sellable feature to help sell future events. 

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