Instagram for hotels: a guide for small and independent hotels

A professional account gives you insights, contact details on your profile and Instagram's tools for businesses. Instagram's help gives these steps in the app:

1. 1Tap your profile picture at the bottom right to open your profile.
2. 2Tap the menu, then “Settings and activity”.
3. 3Under “For professionals”, tap “Account type and tools”, then “Switch to professional account”.
4. 4Choose the category that describes the hotel, and tap “Switch to professional account” again.
5. 5Choose “Business” and tap “Next”.
6. 6Add the hotel's contact details and tap “Next”, then connect your Facebook Page with “Log in to Facebook”, or tap “Skip”.

Instagram says the category you choose doesn't decide whether the account is a business or a creator account, and that switching makes a private account public. Run the hotel's own account, in the hotel's name, with its password kept by the owner rather than by one member of staff or an agency.

Your profile is the page a guest opens after seeing one of your posts. In a glance it should say what you are, where, and how to book.

• Name and username: the hotel's name as on your sign, so that a guest searching for you finds you.
• Bio: what you are, where, and who you suit. Instagram's tips for reach say to put the words people search for in your bio and your captions.
• Links: Instagram lets you add up to five, under “Edit profile”, then “Links”, then “Add link”. Put your own booking page first, then your WhatsApp short link, then your page for weddings or events.
• Category and contact details: under “Edit profile”, then “Public business information”, with “Profile display” to show or hide them.
• Address: Instagram's help says to set it on the Facebook Page linked to your account, after which your location can take up to 48 hours to appear on Instagram's map and to be tagged in posts.
• Highlights: stories saved on your profile under Rooms, Food, Weddings, How to reach us and Guests, so the questions guests ask are answered before they write.

Instagram's action buttons, such as Book, come through partner booking services, and you need an account with one of them first. Without one, the first link in your profile does the same job.

• Each kind of room in daylight, filmed slowly from the door to the window, with the view.
• The bathroom, the bed and the balcony, which guests want to see before they book.
• Breakfast, and the dishes guests praise in their reviews, being made.
• The small facts that decide a booking: the way from the station or airport, the car park, the lift, the pool's hours.
• Your staff at work, with their permission.
• The town around you: the walk to the fort, the market, the temple at dawn, the lake at dusk.
• Weddings, festivals and events at the hotel, with the families' permission.
• Answers to the questions guests ask on WhatsApp and in reviews, one at a time.

Use your reviews as the list. What guests praise most is what the next guest wants to see, and what they complain about is what to show is fixed. Never post a photo of a room that no longer looks like that: the guest who arrives will say so in a review.

Reels are how a hotel's account reaches people who don't follow it yet. Instagram has said what it looks at:

• On 31 May 2023 Instagram wrote that for reels it looks at what the viewer has watched and liked, their history with the account, the reel itself (its audio, its picture and how popular it is) and the account that posted it. Among the things it predicts are whether someone will watch to the end and share the reel.
• In the same piece it said it makes reels that are low resolution, watermarked, muted, bordered, mostly text, or already posted on Instagram less visible in recommendations.
• On 21 January 2025 it said reels of up to 3 minutes can be recommended to people who don't follow you, and asked accounts to post original content consistently.
• Its tips for reach say reposts of reels already on Instagram, content with noticeable watermarks, and accounts that mostly repost others' content are less likely to be recommended.
• Adding audio to a photo or a carousel may let it appear in the Reels tab, Instagram says.

In practice: film at the hotel yourself, on a phone, in good light, with sound or music added in Instagram, and never post a video carrying another app's watermark. Make the first seconds show the room, the view or the dish, so that a viewer stays to the end.

Trial reels let you show a reel first to people who don't follow you. Instagram began rolling them out on 10 December 2024: make the reel as usual and, before sharing it, turn on “Trial”. About 24 hours later you can see its views, likes, comments and shares. If it does well you can share it with everyone, or let Instagram share it with your followers automatically, judged on its views in the first 72 hours.

• Each week: two or three posts or reels made at the hotel, stories most days (today's breakfast, the weather, a room ready for a guest), and a reply to every comment and message the same day.
• Each month: read your insights (see the last part of this guide), keep making what reached people and drop what didn't, and add new photos of one thing guests choose you for.
• Each season: six weeks before each busy period, start posting about it, the festival dinner, the long weekend, the wedding season, with its page on your website as the first link in your profile. Afterwards, post what happened, with guests' permission.

Meta Business Suite, Meta's own tool for Facebook and Instagram, lets you create or schedule posts and stories ahead and answer Facebook, Messenger and Instagram messages in one inbox, which helps when one person looks after both.

A guest who writes to you on Instagram is close to booking. Answer the same day, in the desk's hours, and:

• Keep short written answers ready for what guests ask most: the price for their dates, how to reach you, check-in time, parking, whether children stay free.
• Send a guest who is ready to book to your own booking page or to your WhatsApp, never to a booking site.
• Connect your WhatsApp Business number to your professional account: Instagram's help says a WhatsApp Business number can be connected so that guests can reach you there.

A free stay given to an influencer is advertising, and both India's advertising guidelines and Instagram's rules treat it so.

• The Advertising Standards Council of India's guidelines for influencer advertising in digital media cover any connection between an advertiser and an influencer that may affect how much weight people give a post, and name trips and hotel stays, gifts and discounts as well as money.
• The post must say so upfront and prominently, with a label such as Advertisement, Ad, Sponsored, Collaboration, Partnership or Free gift, or the platform's own disclosure tool.
• On a picture without text, the label goes on the picture itself. On a video of 15 seconds or less it stays on screen for at least 3 seconds; on one up to 2 minutes long, for a third of its length; on a longer one, for the whole part that shows the hotel.
• Instagram's Branded Content Policies say content made for a business partner in exchange for something of value, such as money or free gifts, may be posted only with its branded content tool, tagging the partner with their permission.
• A collaborative post appears on both accounts and is shown to both sets of followers. Instagram allows up to five collaborators on a post.

Choose people whose followers are your guests: families from your nearest cities, couples, wedding planners, travel writers. Agree in writing what they will post and when, and ask for the post's insights afterwards. Never give a stay or a discount for a review on Google or a booking site: Google says offering incentives such as free or discounted goods or services in exchange for reviews is strictly prohibited.

Account Status, on professional accounts, shows whether your account and your content can be recommended to people who don't follow you, whether your profile goes against Instagram's Recommendation Guidelines, and whether anything has been removed for breaking its Community Standards. Check it each month.

• Content that goes against the Recommendation Guidelines can still be seen by your followers, but isn't recommended to others, and you may be able to request a review.
• Instagram says that if an account isn't eligible, none of its content is recommended, even if only some of it broke the guidelines.
• Your profile photo and bio count too.

To share a guest's photo or reel, ask them first and credit them. Instagram says it encourages original posts and wants creators credited when others share their work.

Instagram's insights cover the last 90 days, and are free for public accounts. In the app, open the insights from your profile, or tap “View insights” under a post or reel; tap the (i) at the top to see what each figure means, and the drop-down to change the period.

• Views: how many times your content was played or shown.
• Interactions: likes, comments, saves and shares.
• Accounts engaged: the accounts that interacted with your content, split into followers and people who don't follow you yet.
• Total followers: shown once you have 100 followers, with where they live, their ages and when they are most active.
• Content you shared: how much you posted in the period.

What matters to a hotel is what happens next: messages asking about a stay, and visits to your booking page. Tag the links in your profile (see the guide on digital marketing for hotels) so that Google Analytics shows the visitors who came from Instagram, and ask guests at check-in how they found you.