What the guest is actually asking
How do I arrive. What do I see from the bed. How far is the water, in steps rather than metres. Is the pool in the sun in the afternoon. Is the road to the door a road or a track. Every photo gallery answers one of these by accident; a short walk-through answers all of them on purpose.
The video that works
Short, no compulsory music, and a real route: the arrival, the rooms in the order you walk them, the way out to the sea. What does not work is the two-minute montage with a drone spinning over the roof — pretty, and it tells the guest nothing.
You do not need a film crew. A drone flight and a steady phone walk-through are enough, as long as the route makes sense.
Scroll as a way to walk
When the film advances with the scroll, the visitor sets the pace: they stop where they care, go back, look again. It also solves the oldest problem with video on the web, which is that nobody presses play.
In Trullo del Moro and Villa Santina the whole arrival is one continuous flight that moves as you scroll, and the rooms have their own walk-through.
It must not weigh a tonne
A beautiful site that takes five seconds does not sell: the visitor is already gone. Speed is part of the photography budget, not a technical detail at the end.
- Images in webp, in the size each screen actually needs.
- A poster frame first, the video only when it is on screen.
- Frames instead of a heavy video file when the film has to follow the scroll.
- Measure on a phone over mobile data, not on your office connection.
What you can skip
Autoplay music, text on top of text, stock video of a beach that is not yours, and the 360º tour nobody rotates. If it does not answer one of the questions in the first section, it is decoration.
How to plan a two-hour shoot
Most places are covered in two hours, not a day, if the list is written beforehand. Pick the hour when the light falls on the side that matters, walk the route once without the camera, and only then shoot: the arrival, each room from the doorway, the views from where people actually sit, and two or three details that belong to this house and no other.
- Write the shot list first, with the route in order.
- The outside in the last hour of light; the inside with the lamps on.
- Beds made and surfaces clear: what is in the frame is what you are selling.
- Keep the original files: the next redesign starts from them.