Airbnb, short-term rentals & property managers
Five photos decide whether your listing gets the booking
Guests scroll past dozens of near-identical rentals in a couple of minutes. Your hero image and the four that follow are the whole pitch. I build that sequence — styled, photographed and edited so the scroll stops on your property.
Styled bedroom — Perfect Home Alsace, Mulhouse
What professional photography changes, measured
Airbnb's own data is blunt about it. Listings shot professionally are booked around twice as often and can earn up to 40% more revenue. Industry research puts the decision even earlier in the funnel: 90% of guests make up their minds on the first five photographs. Everything below that is confirmation, not persuasion.
The mechanism is easy to follow. Your photographs are the only part of the property a guest can inspect before paying. Shot on a phone, a good flat looks like every other flat in the results grid, so it competes on price alone and drags your ADR down with it. Styled and photographed with intent, the same flat moves up a category in the guest's mind. That shift is where a healthier occupancy rate and a stronger nightly rate actually come from.
Strong images also change where the booking happens. A convincing gallery on your own website turns browsers into direct bookings, and a direct booking carries no OTA commission. Most owners file photography under listing costs. It belongs closer to distribution.
×2
bookings for professionally photographed listings.
Airbnb data+40%
additional revenue potential with professional photography.
Airbnb data90%
of guests decide on the first five photos of a listing.
Industry research
The breakfast tray that sells the stay
The living room that sets the tone
Why not the free photographer Airbnb offers?
Airbnb does run a photography programme. It is invitation-only, limited to selected cities, and deliberately standardised: usually two or three frames per room, no styling, the same house look applied everywhere. That is a perfectly reasonable way to document a property. It is not a way to make one wanted.
My work is the opposite of a standard. The hero image is chosen for one job — stopping the scroll inside a grid of competitors who all photographed the same beige sofa. Rooms are styled before anything is shot: breakfast laid out, a throw opened, lamps lit, the table dressed as if a guest had just walked in. And the pictures belong to you. They go straight onto Booking.com, Vrbo, Google and your own booking engine, with no commission attached to any of them.
What the shoot includes
- Preparation advice. A short, practical checklist of what to clear, add or replace before the day. It costs you nothing and it changes the result more than any camera.
- Styling. Handled by me, or built with interior designer Estelle Sylla-Busch of Oh! ma déco when the property deserves a full set-up.
- Every space photographed. Controlled wide angles, straight verticals, natural light used properly, plus the close details that carry atmosphere.
- Expert post-production. Each delivered image is worked on individually. No conveyor-belt filter, no shrieking HDR, no fake sky.
- An unlimited number of images, tailored to the project. A three-bedroom house with a garden needs more than a studio flat, and it gets more.
- A gallery ready to publish. Ordered sequence, hero image identified, formats that satisfy Airbnb, Booking.com and Vrbo without further cropping.
Half a day on site covers a rental, styling included. Delivery follows in under a week, guaranteed — an empty listing waiting on photographs is simply losing nights.
How the day runs
- The conversation. You describe the property, the guests you attract and the goal: a first listing, a relaunch after refurbishment, a new season, a move towards direct bookings.
- Preparation. You get a short checklist. Nothing complicated — clear surfaces, fresh linen, working bulbs, the one piece of furniture that should probably leave the room before I arrive.
- Styling and shooting. Half a day on site. Spaces are set up first, then photographed in a deliberate order so nothing gets forgotten and nothing gets rushed at the end.
- Post-production. Every delivered image worked individually. This is where the pictures gain their atmosphere and their light.
- Delivery. In under a week, guaranteed: a full-resolution gallery, an ordered sequence for the listing, and the hero image flagged.
The properties this works hardest for
Short-term rental is not one market, and the photographic problem changes with the product.
- City apartments and serviced flats. The most crowded search results in Europe, and the ones where a hero image earns its keep fastest. Business guests in Basel, Zurich, Luxembourg or Brussels compare fifteen near-identical flats in five minutes; the one that looks like somewhere to come home to wins the week-long stay.
- Design-led and boutique rentals. If you have invested in furniture, joinery or a real interior scheme, phone photographs are actively destroying that investment. This is where styling pays back most visibly, because the property already has something to show.
- Holiday houses, chalets and country properties. Larger spaces, more rooms, outdoor areas and a setting that has to be part of the story. These take longer than half a day and I say so before we book.
- Guest houses and small B&Bs. Properties competing against hotels without a hotel's marketing budget. A strong series levels that field faster than any advertising spend.
- New listings and post-refurbishment relaunches. The moment photography returns the most. A new listing has no reviews to lean on, so the images carry the entire risk assessment a guest is making.
Whatever the format, the brief starts from the same question: what does this property need to sell — longer stays, higher rates, a better week-night occupancy rate, or fewer bookings routed through an OTA? The shot list is built backwards from the answer.
For property managers: one visual standard across the whole portfolio
If you manage ten, fifty or two hundred properties, inconsistency is your quiet problem. One owner supplied bright phone snaps, another paid for a shoot three years ago, a third sent nothing. The portfolio looks assembled rather than managed, and listing performance varies for reasons that have nothing to do with the properties themselves.
A single photographic standard fixes two things at once. It gives your sales team something concrete to show owners you are pitching against a competitor, and it lifts conversion rate across the whole inventory, because every listing arrives on the platform with a hero image built to compete. I work with managers and agencies on a recurring basis: a repeatable shoot process, short lead times, and a consistent look from one property to the next.
Based in Alsace, working across Europe
Alsace sits in a useful place. Basel, Zurich, Luxembourg, Brussels and Paris are all a short train ride away, which is why a good part of my work is now outside France: serviced apartments in Switzerland, city rentals in Luxembourg and Belgium, holiday houses in the German and French border regions. Travel is built into the quote from the beginning, never added at the end.
The other thing I bring across the border is a way of seeing. French art de vivre is not a slogan here — it is the difference between a photograph of a kitchen and a photograph of a breakfast about to be eaten in it. Guests do not book square metres. They book the morning they imagine having.
Properties I can name include Perfect Home Alsace in Mulhouse, alongside hotel work for Hôtel l'Europe 4★ in Horbourg-Wihr, Les Violettes Hôtel & SPA 4★ in Jungholtz and Tulip Inn Lausanne Beaulieu 3★ in Switzerland. A number of other rental and hospitality shoots are covered by non-disclosure agreements; I show the relevant series in person.
Frequently asked questions
Why not use the photographer Airbnb provides?
Invitation-only, standardised, two or three frames per room, no styling — and images shaped for one platform. An independent photographer builds a listing that is yours, and that works just as hard on Booking.com, Vrbo and your own direct-booking site.
How long does a rental shoot take?
Half a day on site for a rental, styling included. Larger properties with several bedrooms and outdoor spaces run longer, and you know that before we book — not on the day.
How many images will I receive?
An unlimited number, tailored to the project. I do not sell photographs by the unit, because a property that needs thirty images should not be handed eighteen to fit a package. Every delivered image is retouched individually.
When do I get the photos?
In under a week, guaranteed. A listing waiting on its photographs is losing nights, so speed is part of the service and not an extra.
Do professional photos really increase bookings?
Airbnb's data shows roughly twice the bookings and up to 40% more revenue for professionally photographed listings. Industry research adds that 90% of guests decide on the first five photos. The full picture, with sources →
Do you style the property before shooting?
Yes — it is the heart of the method. On my own, or with interior designer Estelle Sylla-Busch of Oh! ma déco for full set-ups: breakfast laid out, throws opened, table dressed, lamps lit.
Do you work with property managers and agencies?
Regularly, and usually on a recurring basis. A consistent standard across the portfolio wins owners and lifts listing performance at the same time.
Do you travel outside France?
Yes. Based in Alsace, a short train ride from Basel, Zurich, Luxembourg, Brussels and Paris, and working across Europe. Travel is priced into the quote from the start.
First contact