The lobby on our website hasn't existed since 2022

Author : Wren Halloway | Published On : 03 Nov 2026

The lobby photo on our site was shot in 2013, back when the carpet was navy and nobody had decided the fluorescent sconces were a crime yet. We pulled all of that out in 2022. New floors. Better lighting. Actual plants. The photo stayed, because getting a photographer in here kept not happening.

I finally asked for a quote this spring. $2,300 for a half day, plus retouching, plus we'd have to squeeze the shoot into the gap between checkout and check-in while guests dragged suitcases through the frame. We have 18 rooms. The math never worked, so I stopped opening our own website, which is a terrible way to run a small hotel.

I'll be honest about what it's good for, because I got this wrong at first. I don't pass generated images off as photos of our actual rooms. Guests deserve the real thing, and one "this looks nothing like the pictures" review costs more than any photographer would. What I use them for is the blog, the newsletter header, and mood boards. When we redo the breakfast nook this winter, my contractor gets pictures instead of me saying "warmer, somehow."

The hero photo is still the old one for now. I found a local photographer who'll do two hours for $600, and we're booking her for December. Sometimes the old way is fine. But for everything that lives around the photos, this stuff has earned its keep.

Then in September a woman who runs a B&B in Vermont mentioned in an owners group that she'd been mocking up her lobby with AI instead. I laughed, then stayed up past midnight typing hotel lobby ai into a search bar, half expecting cartoon furniture. What came back looked like our lobby on its best possible day. Warmer light, better angles, no suitcase.