What Instagram does for a property
Before they book, many travelers go and see what the place really looks like. Your Instagram account is often the only showcase they find outside the booking platforms: it shows the morning light in the room, the breakfast, the road to your door, everything a catalog photo leaves out.
It does two jobs. It reassures the guest who is already torn between you and another property. And, with reels, it puts you in front of people who don’t know you yet. Both end in the same place: a link or a message that leads to your direct booking.
Your profile: what to set up before you post
- A professional account. It’s free and gives you insights, contact buttons and saved replies.
- A display name that says what you are and where: “Hôtel des Tilleuls · Annecy” is easier to find than the name of the house alone.
- A two-line bio: the type of property, the location, what sets you apart. No string of emojis.
- Links: Instagram accepts up to five in the bio. The first one should lead to your direct booking, not your website’s homepage.
- Story highlights sorted by theme: rooms, breakfast, the area, getting here. They answer the questions you get asked most.
What to post: start from what you really have
The posts that help a property show a moment the traveler will be able to live at your place. A few starting points to adapt:
- Arrival: the gate, the driveway, the door opening, the key on the bed.
- The room at wake-up: curtains drawn back, the view, the light.
- Breakfast or the shared dinner table: what’s homemade, what comes from just down the road.
- Behind the scenes: linen being folded, bread arriving, the garden being watered. It shows the care without saying it.
- The area in season: the market, the hike, the lake, what you yourself recommend to your guests.
- Answers to common questions: parking, pets, check-in time, getting here without a car.
For a vacation rental, the space matters more than the service: the equipped kitchen, the living room, the outdoors, the quiet. For a B&B, it’s the welcome and the table. For a hotel, it’s the room and what’s around it.
Reels, carousels, stories: what each format is for
- The reel: a short vertical video. Instagram also shows reels to people who don’t follow you, in the Reels tab and the Explore tab. It’s the format that gets your property discovered.
- The carousel: several photos or videos in one post. Useful to present a room, a typical stay or a season.
- The story: visible for twenty-four hours. For everyday life, a last-minute opening, a poll, a question.
A property doesn’t need every format every week. Regular reels, a few carousels and stories when something happens are enough to keep an account alive.
How often to post
Consistency matters more than volume. Pick a pace you can hold all season, for example two posts a week, and stick to it. An account that posts ten times in May and then nothing until September looks like a property that has closed.
Planning the week ahead saves you from posting in a rush. Meta Business Suite, Meta’s free tool, lets you schedule posts and reels on Instagram and Facebook at the same time.
Messages: where the booking happens
A question by direct message is often from someone who already wants to come. “Are you free the weekend of the 14th?”, “Do you take dogs?”, “What’s the price for two nights?”: every message without a quick reply is a guest heading back to a booking platform.
Prepare saved replies for the questions that keep coming back, and end every reply with your direct booking link or your phone number. A post can also invite people to comment or message a specific word to get your rates: the request then lands in the right place.
Knowing what drives bookings
Instagram insights give you views, profile visits and clicks on your links. They don’t tell you which post led to a booking. To know that, you need a different link for each post, or tracking parameters in the URL, and you need to check where your website bookings come from.