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What global hospitality brands actually need from photography – lessons from working with Hilton
By Flare Department
When a hospitality brand the size of Hilton commissions photography, the brief is never simple. It’s not “photograph the hotel.” It’s “create a suite of assets that can launch a new global dining concept, work across hotel booking platforms, appear in in-hotel signage, support marketing campaigns in multiple markets, and satisfy stakeholders from brand teams to F&B directors to regional marketing managers — all while feeling distinct to this specific venue.”
That’s a fundamentally different challenge from photographing an independent restaurant or boutique hotel. And understanding that difference is what separates a hospitality photographer who can genuinely serve a global brand from one who simply takes good pictures of spaces.
We’ve worked with Hilton across multiple projects at their DoubleTree Amsterdam Centraal Station property — including the redesign of 54 hotel rooms in the Amsterdam School style, the LuminAir skybar, their Lot61 coffee collaboration, and the launch of WE ARE EDN — their new global dining concept. We also photographed and filmed their OXBO F&B concept ahead of its opening at Hilton Geneva, creating assets for both the local launch and global rollout across Europe. Here’s what we’ve learned.
Scope changes everything — especially how you plan
The most visible difference when working with a global hospitality brand is the scale of asset usage. An independent venue might need imagery for their website, Instagram, and a local press release. A global brand like Hilton needs imagery that works across hotel booking platforms, digital advertising, in-hotel signage, brand presentations, regional marketing campaigns, and international press, simultaneously.
Every Hilton project we’ve worked on has required us to think beyond the shoot itself and into how each image will ultimately be used. Sometimes that means scheduling a full additional day to capture content for a specific channel. Sometimes it’s as practical as delivering every image in both landscape and portrait formats for different placements. The brief doesn’t end with what to photograph, it extends to where every frame will eventually live.
Understanding the full scope of final usage before a single frame is taken determines everything else about how a production is structured: how many days are needed, how many crew members, which formats to shoot in, and what the post-production pipeline looks like. Getting this wrong at the briefing stage means arriving on set without the assets the brand actually needs — which for a global launch like WE ARE EDN, with stakeholders across multiple markets watching the outcome, is not an option.
Every concept needs its own identity — within a consistent brand
One of the most interesting creative challenges of working across multiple Hilton concepts is that each venue needs to feel completely distinct, while still sitting clearly within the Hilton brand family.
For the hotels guest rooms, we showcased the comfort of their newly redisigned rooms, highlighting the natural light, design details and views over the city- keeping the images sharp and elegant. WE ARE EDN is a casual, vibrant eatery, designed to feel approachable and fun. LuminAir is a glamorous rooftop cocktail bar — dark, atmospheric, aspirational. Lot61 coffee bar is light and welcoming – a fresh spot to start the day. The photography for each needs to reflect those completely different moods, and yet both need to feel like they belong to the same group.
Take the four concepts we’ve worked on at DoubleTree Amsterdam. The hotel guest rooms required sharp, elegant imagery that showcased the comfort of the newly redesigned spaces, highlighting natural light, design details, and city views. WE ARE EDN is a casual, vibrant eatery designed to feel approachable and fun. LuminAir is a glamorous rooftop cocktail bar where the ambience is dark, atmospheric, and aspirational. Lot61 is a light, welcoming coffee bar offering a fresh start to the day. Four completely different moods, all sitting under the same brand umbrella.
Achieving that requires intentional decisions at every stage of production. The framing and composition on set, the lighting approach, the styling of the F&B, the colour grading in post-production, all of these shift depending on the concept. For the hotel rooms, we focused on clean, precise compositions that communicated comfort and quality — natural light where possible, careful attention to design details, and a restrained edit that let the rooms speak for themselves. WE ARE EDN called for wide, colourful compositions that captured the energy of the restaurant across day and evening. The F&B content had to mirror that. LuminAir called for tighter, darker frames, paired with food and beverage photography accentuated by using bold backgrounds. Lot61 needed to feel as fresh as their coffee through bright interior tones balanced with warmth. The brief for each was different, but the standard was the same.
“Like the design, our hospitality imagery aims to entice and invite guests to enjoy the space — just as we did while capturing it.”
How we collaborate with global hospitality teams
Working with a global brand means working with multiple stakeholders who all have a legitimate interest in the outcome. At Hilton, this includes marketing teams, brand managers, F&B directors, and regional teams across markets. Each has their own priorities for how the final imagery will be used.
Our creative director Bas Goossens, alongside our project managers, works closely with Hilton’s teams throughout every stage — from pre-production briefing through to final delivery. On set, we run a remote screen so the Hilton team can see each image as it’s produced and give feedback in real time, rather than waiting until delivery to raise concerns. In post-production, we finalise the look together, and for major projects, we invite stakeholders into our Amsterdam studio to review the colour grade before it’s applied to the full series.
This level of integration is only possible because of how we’re structured. Our photographers focus entirely on capturing great images. Our creative director and project managers focus on ensuring those images meet the brief, satisfy the stakeholders, and work across every platform they’ll ultimately appear on. The two things happen in parallel, which is why complex, multi-stakeholder productions don’t have to be complicated to manage.
The result, for Hilton, has been an ongoing relationship built on trust. They know what we produce, how we work, and what they’ll get. That’s why they keep coming back, and why we’ve now worked across four concepts at one property, and extended that relationship internationally to Geneva.
What this means for any hospitality brand commissioning photography
Whether you’re a global hotel group or a single-site restaurant, the fundamentals don’t change. Photography that drives bookings, communicates atmosphere, and works across multiple channels requires a clearly understood brief, thorough preparation, a production team that can handle complexity, and a post-production process that delivers a consistent visual identity.
The difference with a global brand is scale; more venues, more formats, more stakeholders, more usage contexts. But the underlying discipline is identical.
Working on a hospitality photography brief? Explore our hospitality services or get in touch to discuss your project.