Hotel pre-opening marketing video: how to make one from renderings for group sales, OTAs and social
How to make a hotel pre-opening marketing video from renderings: six scenes, concept labels, OTA listings on Booking.com and Expedia, and a launch timeline.
In this article
A hotel starts selling long before it has a room to photograph. The sales team is quoting group blocks and weddings from a rendering package, the website needs more than a "coming soon" line, and the travel partners want a gallery. A short film made from the architect's or interior designer's renderings fills that gap, as long as it is labeled honestly and placed where renderings belong. This guide covers what a hotel pre-opening marketing video is for, the six renderings to use, how to label a concept, where the film can and can't go, including OTA listings, and a timeline from sales launch to opening day.
Key takeaways
- A hotel pre-opening video is a short concept film made from renderings; its main jobs are giving the group sales team something to send and giving the website and social accounts something to post before photography exists.
- Six renderings cover a hotel: the arrival, the lobby and bar, one guest room, the meeting or event space, the signature amenity, and the building at dusk.
- Label every version "artist's rendering" with the planned opening season, and show only rooms, views and amenities the owner has committed to build.
- OTA galleries are built for photographs of the actual property, so keep the film on your own channels and book the photographer early enough to replace renderings before the listing gets traffic.
- Google lets a business add an opening date up to a year ahead, and the profile appears 90 days before that date, as of October 2026.
What a hotel pre-opening marketing video is for
A hotel pre-opening marketing video is a short film made from the renderings and used before there is anything to photograph: the sales team sends it to meeting planners and couples, and the website and social accounts post it to start building demand. To make one, pick six renderings that cover arrival, the lobby, a guest room, the event space, the signature amenity and the exterior at dusk, turn them into a vertical film of about 30 seconds, and label it as an artist's rendering with the planned opening season. Keep it off OTA galleries, which are meant for photographs, and replace it with real footage once the hotel opens.
Three groups watch it, and each wants something different.
Group and event buyers. Meeting planners, corporate travel managers, couples and tour operators commit to dates far ahead. They want the ballroom, the breakout rooms and the room type they would block, and a 30-second link is easier to forward to the person who signs than a 40-page sales kit.
Leisure travelers. They find a new hotel through social posts, press and the brand's site. They are not booking yet; they are deciding whether to remember the name.
Partners. The convention and visitors bureau, travel advisors and journalists need something they can share without writing to you first.
Six renderings that cover a hotel
Most hotel design packages already contain these images. The test for each one is the question it answers for a guest.
| Scene | Rendering | Question it answers | Who cares most |
|---|---|---|---|
| Arrival | Entrance, porte-cochère or street frontage | "What is it like to arrive?" | Everyone |
| Lobby and bar | Lobby from the entry, with the bar or lounge in view | "Is this a place I would spend time?" | Leisure guests, locals |
| Guest room | Your most common room type, from the door toward the window | "What am I paying for?" | Leisure and corporate |
| Event space | Ballroom set for dinner, or a meeting room set up | "Can it hold our event?" | Group buyers, couples |
| Signature amenity | Rooftop, pool, spa or restaurant | "Why this hotel and not the one next door?" | Leisure guests, couples |
| Dusk exterior | The building lit at dusk | "This is the place" | Everyone |
Render all six in the same season and light family, with a single dusk image; a sunny lobby cut against a night pool reads as two properties. Pick the guest room you sell most of rather than the suite, which sets an expectation most guests won't book. A meeting-floor plan can be one of the six, but it is treated as a document, a slow pan across the sheet, and costs a scene. When leisure and group audiences need different emphasis, make two films from two sets of six. The six roles a project image set has to fill explains the logic.
Label it as a concept, and show only what is committed
A pre-opening film is a promise about rooms, in motion. Three rules keep it honest.
Label every version. Write "Artist's rendering. Opening spring 2027" (or your season) in the caption, on the landing page and in every sales email. If you edit the file in another tool, put the same line on screen. Disclosure wording for renderings and AI images has versions you can copy.
Show only what is in the budget. An unobstructed ocean view from a room type that will face the parking structure is a complaint waiting to happen; so is a spa that was value-engineered out last month. Have the owner's representative confirm every space in the film is still in scope.
Know where the people come from. An AI-generated film interprets the image rather than reproducing it. In an Arch2Video film, a small cast of original, fictional adults appears in at least one scene, and people already in the renderings are replaced by that cast rather than animated. They are not your staff or real guests, which suits a pre-opening film, but the label still has to make clear nobody has stayed there yet. Review every scene: if the camera invents a balcony or extends a pool, don't send that version; swap or reframe the image and make a new film.
If the hotel carries a brand flag, check the brand's approval route for pre-opening marketing before anything goes public.
Where the film goes before opening
| Channel | Version | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Group sales emails and proposals | Link to the hosted film, plus stills | Opening season and "subject to change" in the email body |
| Hotel website "coming soon" page | Embedded film with captions | Pair it with an inquiry form for groups and weddings |
| Instagram, Facebook, TikTok | Vertical 1080 × 1920 file | "Artist's rendering" in the caption, not only in a comment |
| LinkedIn (owner, director of sales) | Same vertical file | Reaches planners and corporate travel buyers |
| Google Business Profile | Posts and stills once the opening date is set | Visible 90 days before opening |
| Sales office or hard-hat tour screen | Vertical film on a designed landscape background | Test it on the actual screen |
LinkedIn accepts the vertical file as it is: its help page lists an aspect ratio range of 1:2.4 to 2.4:1 and a minimum duration of three seconds when uploading from a desktop (LinkedIn Help, as of October 2026). LinkedIn video for architecture firms covers posting habits that also suit a hotel sales team.
Google is the channel most hotels set up too late. Google's help page says you can enter an opening date "up to one year in the future," that after you verify, "your profile shows up on Google 90 days prior to your opening date," and that users cannot post reviews or photos to the profile "until your business is officially open" (Google Business Profile Help, as of October 2026). Before opening you can post updates and add photos of construction progress, which is where stills from the film and real site photos sit well together. Google Business Profile for architects walks through the profile itself.
OTA listings: what Booking.com and Expedia expect
Booking.com. Booking.com's connectivity documentation for partners loading content through its Photos API lists a minimum of 300 × 300 pixels, a maximum of 14,000 × 14,000 pixels, a maximum file size of 50 MB, and up to 299 photos per property (Booking.com for Developers, as of October 2026). That page says nothing about video or renderings. Booking.com's partner help pages returned an access error when we tried to read them, so whether a property can upload its own video, and how Booking.com treats renderings for a hotel that is not open yet, could not be verified as of October 2026.
Expedia Group. Expedia Group's photo guidelines for lodging partners redirected to a sign-in portal when we tried to read them, so their current rules could not be verified as of October 2026 either.
The principle doesn't depend on the wording: an OTA gallery shows travelers the property they will arrive at, and a guest who booked from a rendering and found a different room has a place to review. In practice:
- Ask your market manager or channel manager, in writing, whether renderings are accepted before opening and how they must be marked.
- Schedule the photographer for the first days after the rooms are finished, before the listing has much traffic.
- Keep the film on the channels you control, where the "artist's rendering" label travels with it.
A pre-opening timeline for the film
| Stage | What the hotel has | What to do with the film |
|---|---|---|
| Design development | Concept renderings that will still change | Wait; a film now locks in images that may not survive |
| Group sales begin | A final rendering package | Make the film; send it to planners; launch the "coming soon" page |
| Booking engine opens | Rates and room types loaded | Social posts, LinkedIn, the email list, partner kits |
| 90 days before opening | A visible Google profile | Posts with stills; invitations to hard-hat tours |
| Opening | Finished rooms | Photo and video shoot; replace renderings everywhere |
| First months open | Real guests and real events | Retire the rendering film from sales; the design team keeps it as concept work |
Make the film when the renderings stop changing, not earlier, and plan its retirement on the day you book the photographer.
Making the film from the rendering package
The renderings usually come from the architect or interior designer, so the film can be a small extra deliverable from the same team. With Arch2Video you upload exactly six images from one project (JPG, PNG, HEIC, TIFF or WebP, up to 30 MB each; 1,500 px or more on the long side gives the sharpest scenes) and get back a 1080 × 1920 vertical MP4 of about 30 seconds: six connected five-second AI-generated scenes, an original soundtrack (Still Air by default, or Quiet Piano, Concrete, or none) and an optional logo. A logo film also comes in a no-logo version, handy when the hotel posts its branded copy and a partner needs a clean one. The AI director plans the scene order, so it may differ from your upload order.
It costs USD 15 per video, a one-time card payment; uploading is free and the price is shown before you pay. Generation usually takes an hour or more, and you are emailed when it's ready; you can then switch the soundtrack or logo and re-export without paying again. It works from images, not a 3D model, so it is not a measured walkthrough. Example films show the output, and the restaurant and café opening guide covers the hotel's food and beverage outlets.
Frequently asked questions
Can we put renderings on Booking.com or Expedia before the hotel opens?
Ask the OTA in writing before you upload anything. Booking.com's developer documentation covers photo dimensions and file size only, and neither OTA's partner rules on renderings could be read from outside the partner login, so they could not be verified as of October 2026. If renderings are accepted, label them and replace them with photographs as soon as the rooms are finished.
When should a hotel start its pre-opening marketing?
Start when group sales start quoting dates, because group and wedding buyers commit earliest and need something to look at. Public social posts make more sense once the booking engine is open and people can act on them. On Google, you can enter an opening date up to one year ahead, and the profile becomes visible 90 days before that date, as of October 2026.
Will the people in the video look like real guests?
They are original, fictional adults generated for the film, not your staff and not anyone in your renderings, who are replaced by that cast rather than animated. That suits a pre-opening film, since a lobby bar or ballroom reads better occupied, but the caption still has to say "artist's rendering" so nobody mistakes the scene for an event that already happened.
Can the same film go to meeting planners and on Instagram?
Yes. The vertical file works as a link in a sales email, as posted on Instagram and TikTok, and on LinkedIn without changes. If group sales wants a version built around the ballroom, breakout rooms and a meeting-floor plan, make a second film from a group-focused set of six images.