A seasonal campaign has to be finished before the booking window opens.

Why the timing matters more than the shoot

Most hotels film a season while living in it. Summer content gets shot in July, edited in August and posted in September, by which point the guests it was made for have been and gone. The window it should have advertised into closed before the first Reel went up.

It keeps happening for a sensible reason. A property looks its best during a season, so that feels like the right time to film. It is the right time to film. It is not the right time to start. A campaign built for summer has to be finished before people decide where they are going in summer, and that point sits weeks or months earlier, depending on how far ahead your guests book.

That figure, the gap between the day a booking is made and the day the guest arrives, is in your booking engine or your channel manager. It is the number this whole guide turns on. A city hotel selling weekend breaks may see most bookings land three or four weeks out. A resort, a wedding venue or a property selling Christmas and New Year packages may see bookings land three, six or nine months ahead. The same shoot, on the same day, can be perfectly timed for one and a year late for the other.

So the question to ask is not "when does our property look best?" but "when do our guests decide?" Answer that first, and the shoot date follows from it with simple arithmetic. The rest of this guide is that arithmetic, what the season changes on camera, and what a three night campaign gives you to work with.

Work backwards from the first stay you want to sell

Four numbers decide the date. Only one of them is ours, and it is fixed: everything arrives 10 working days after the end of the visit, which we count as fourteen calendar days when no bank holiday falls in between. The other three are yours.

1. The first stay you want to sellNot the start of the season in general, but the first night that matters: the first weekend the terrace opens, the half term week, the night before Christmas Eve. Write it down as a date.
2. How far ahead your guests bookTake the typical lead time for that kind of stay from your booking engine. If you sell several kinds of stay, use the longest one you want this campaign to reach, because that is the window that closes first.
3. Your time to scheduleThe gap between the files arriving and the campaign going live: sign off, captions checked, posts scheduled, adverts built. Two weeks is realistic for most teams. Allow more if a group marketing team signs things off.
4. Our delivery time10 working days from the end of the visit, which is about fourteen calendar days. Then count the three nights on site back from that.

Take the second, third and fourth numbers off the first, in that order, and you have the latest day the shoot can end. If that day falls before the property looks like the season, you have learnt something important: this season cannot be filmed in time for this year, and the campaign you shoot in it will be selling the same season next year instead.

That is not a failure of planning. For a season with long lead times it is simply how the calendar works, and the hotels that do this well treat it as normal: they film each season properly once, keep the library, and run it a year later, ahead of the window rather than inside it.

Worked dates for 2026 and 2027

Here is the arithmetic done for four real windows, using the England and Wales bank holiday dates published on GOV.UK, a two week scheduling gap and our delivery time. The lead times are examples, so put your own in.

The pattern is worth noticing. With a short lead time, a season can sell itself if you film its opening weeks. With a long one, it almost never can, and the honest answer is to film it properly this year and run it next. Either way, the date comes out of the arithmetic, not out of a feeling that the property looks nice right now.

One more point about the seasonal window itself: it is narrow, and it is the same few weeks for every property that wants it filmed. The week the Christmas tree goes up is the same week for most hotels in the country. Book the window as soon as the seasonal offer is fixed, rather than when it feels close.

Four seasons, four different films

A seasonal campaign is not the same shoot with different weather. The rooms sell on different things, the light behaves differently, and the guest changes with the season. These are the angles we plan around.

1. Spring, March to MayGardens, terraces opening, the first outdoor breakfast of the year. Properties with grounds have their strongest month here and rarely film it, because spring arrives while everyone is still busy selling summer.
2. Summer, June to AugustPool, rooftop, long evenings and the late golden hour. The most competitive season to advertise into, which is why the content has to exist before the window opens rather than during it.
3. Autumn, September to NovemberFireplaces, warm interiors, shoulder season pricing and the quieter weekend. The season most often left undocumented, and the one where a small change in occupancy is worth the most, because the rooms would otherwise sit empty.
4. Winter, December to FebruaryFestive decoration, snow and mountain access, New Year and Valentine's packages. The shortest filming window of the four, and the one where booking late means missing it by a whole year.

Each season also changes who is on camera and how. A summer film is often about a couple at the pool or a family at breakfast; a winter one about the fire, the dinner and the walk back through the snow. You choose who appears, Velena, Dragos, both, or nobody with the property telling its own story, and the brief names the moments the season is sold on.

Why three nights rather than two

A season has a look that has to be established rather than sampled. Three nights give three sunrises, three evenings and every meal service more than once, and they give the weather a chance to do what the season is sold on: the snow, the low autumn sun, the clear summer evening. That is what a campaign needs to run through a whole season without the same frame appearing twice.

The two night Film and Campaign package covers a property properly. Three nights cover a property in a season. If your property looks broadly the same all year, two nights serve you better for less, and we will say so. If one season carries your year, the third night is what makes the film about that season rather than about the building.

The third night also takes the pressure off. A shoot squeezed into one evening has to get the dinner, the room and the view in the same two hours, and it shows. A shoot with three evenings can film dinner on the first, the bar on the second and leave the third for whatever the weather offers.

Watch a stay the way your guests will

These are some of our long films, from the Leitlhof in the Dolomites to 48 hours in York. Tap one to play it; nothing loads from outside the site until you do. There is more on the hotel and restaurant work page.

35:00

38:40

23:52

What arrives, and what the property provides

Everything in the Seasonal Campaign arrives together in a shared folder, 10 working days from the end of the visit. Nothing arrives in instalments and nothing is charged afterwards.

What the property provides is short. A three night stay for two on a full board basis, because lunch and dinner service cannot be filmed without being there for them. Travel to the property: within 90 minutes of High Wycombe is included; elsewhere in the UK and Ireland it is £180, and Europe is £450 on at least 21 days notice. Access, with your policy on people: which areas we can film, and whether staff and guests appear. Most properties say staff yes, guests no. If you want whitelisting, a permission in your ad account.

Nothing else: no crew charge, no lighting hire, no location fee and no day rates on top. We film around your guests, never through them, and public areas are filmed at quiet times agreed with you. Nothing is booked until the dates and the shot list are agreed in writing.

Paid media rights and whitelisting

Every hotel package includes organic use on your own channels. From Film and Campaign upwards, it also includes paid media rights, so the Reels can run as adverts. The Seasonal Campaign adds whitelisting, and that changes how the advertising performs rather than how much you own.

Why no buyout? The footage usually has one of us on camera as a guest in your property. A buyout with onward licensing would let that footage pass to a booking platform or another agency we have no relationship with, which is a different thing from a hotel advertising its own rooms. The licence runs for 12 months and renews rather than expiring quietly, and the rights are stated in your delivery email and in our terms.

A whitelisted advert is still an advert, and it has to look like one: the platforms mark partnership ads and Spark Ads, and UK advertising rules expect a clear label when an ad runs from a person's own account. Our guide to the ASA and the CAP Code on social media explains the rules.

Where the Seasonal Campaign sits in the hotel range

The Seasonal Campaign is the third of four hotel packages, each built around a long form film with Reels cut from the same footage. How many nights decides the package. One night covers rooms, breakfast and the welcome. Two nights cover a property with a restaurant, a pool or a spa. Three nights, in the right window, cover a season. A visit a month keeps the channels matching the season the guest is booking.

Hotel Content: The Property Film£1,950one nightA 10 to 15 minute property film, 6 Reels, 10 stills and the B-roll. Organic rights.

Hotel Content: Film and Campaign£3,200two nightsA 15 to 20 minute film, 10 Reels, 15 stills, Stories and captions, with paid media rights.

Hotel Content: Seasonal Campaign£4,800three nightsA 20 to 30 minute themed film, 14 Reels, 20 stills, paid rights and whitelisting.

Hotel Content: Monthly Retainer£1,800a monthAn overnight visit every month: 8 Reels, 10 stills, Stories and captions.

The step up to the Seasonal Campaign is three nights instead of two, higher deliverable counts, and whitelisting. If one season carries your year, this tier is built for it. If it does not, the tier below serves you better for less. If you would rather not stay overnight at all, the hotel full day shoot sets out a day on site, hour by hour.

One seasonal campaign, or a monthly retainer?

The answer turns on whether your property changes with the year. A hotel with genuinely distinct seasons, a ski resort, a country house with gardens, a property that lives on Christmas, is better served by campaigns timed to them, because each season needs its own film and its own window.

A hotel that looks much the same all year, a city property, a business hotel, is usually better served by one strong library and a retainer that keeps the channels fresh. The Hotel Content: Monthly Retainer brings us back every month for an overnight stay, so what guests see online is the season they will book, with paid media rights every month. It runs month to month with 2 months notice.

Some properties do both: a Seasonal Campaign for the one window that carries the year, and the retainer for the months around it. If you want someone to post it, reply to comments and report on it as well, our hospitality social media management adds that, and our guide to the hotel social media retainer explains how a monthly arrangement works.

Getting the most from the campaign once it lands

A campaign does its work in the weeks after delivery, so it is worth deciding where each piece goes before the files arrive.

1. Put the film where bookings happenThe themed film belongs on the seasonal offer page, the booking engine where it allows video, and YouTube, where a long film can be found by people planning a trip.
2. Post the Reels through the windowFourteen Reels at three a week is about a month of posting. Start the week the campaign goes live and keep the strongest two or three back for the last fortnight, when late bookers are deciding.
3. Run the best Reels as advertsLet the organic numbers choose. The Reels that hold attention on your own feed are the ones to put money behind, and whitelisting lets them run from a real person's handle.
4. Refresh your listingsGoogle's own advice to hotels is that guests rely heavily on photos of rooms when deciding where to book, and it suggests at least three photos of your most popular rooms and one of each common area. The stills are made for that.
5. Keep the libraryThe footage you do not use this year is next year's head start. A season filmed properly once can be recut for the next window.

The wider argument for content that sells rooms directly, rather than through a booking platform's commission, is on our hospitality content creator page, and the sector figures are in our UK hospitality social media report. For what to post through the rest of the year, read our guide to hotel social media content.

Before you book a seasonal campaign

A question this article did not answer? Ask our team, and a person will reply.

Dragos NistorCo-Founder and Business StrategistDragos co-founded Velena Lifestyle and leads its business strategy, including the scheduling, shot plans and delivery of every hospitality shoot. He was named a LinkedIn Top Entrepreneurship Voice in 2024.