Your Business Listings Images Really Take a Team

I think we’ve all been here before. Your new listings page looks gorgeous but then you scroll down to the listings widget and find a lackluster picture of a sign, another plain hotel bed photo or a really bad food shot.

It goes without saying that listing imagery impacts user engagement rates and depending on the quality of the image, it may not be for the better. This is normal and it’s something that most DMOs deal with every day.

Please know you have a listings advocate in the Destination Travel Network (DTN)! Our team is actively working with DMOs and Featured Listings advertisers and member/partners to load meaningful, relevant photography and copy to listings.

As a point of reference, here are our best practices for listings creative:

Provide photos that highlight an experience the visitor can expect to have during their stay
Select photos that highlight real people engaging (happily) with the member/partner’s products and services
Present listing copy that highlights business’ offerings as they relate to their category or subcategory (e.g. details about a hotel’s room offerings have little relevance to users looking at the wedding venues page)
Provide listing copy that is succinct and quickly highlights the value offering to the visitor.

We often field requests from our advertisers to update their listings' photos and copy and help them to identify the listing content that performs better than others based on our best practices. We also help advertisers find engaging photography and set them up with creative assets for a well-performing Featured Listing.

Then we’ll send them to you for final approval. We regard your listing content as exactly that — your content. We’re hard-pressed to start making changes to it ourselves, so we’ll tee them up and send them to you to help execute.

Just know that you’re not battling listing images on your own if you choose to opt-in for DTN's revenue-generating services. We’re with you! If you have any questions about how we serve both DMOs and member/partners, please reach out to us at any time.

Author

Kurtis Durfey

Author

Kurtis Durfey

Kurtis is a seasoned marketer and graphic designer with degrees in Advertising, Graphic Design, and Business Administration and eight years of experience in the travel and tourism space. He worked on the Simpleview XD team in Tucson for a spell before departing SV and rejoining the DTN Operations team remotely from beautiful Bend, Oregon, in 2017.

Kurtis heads up the DTN MarComm team and is a primary point of contact for DMO partners. The DTN MarComm team manages a variety of project types, including building DTN onto a new DMO website, planning DTN sales campaigns, and communications related to DTN's products and services.