Why you need photos of your escape room

I have seen many heated discussions in owner and enthusiast groups whether escape room websites should have photos of their rooms or not. Some consider it a spoiler and something that taints the full experience, some think that it’s essential to support the booking process.

I’m going to spoil my stance on the topic, I’m absolutely pro-photo. Without photos you might be damaging the bottom line and only satisfy a small group of people.

Keep on reading though, I have a solution for you at the end if you don’t want to share photos of your rooms.

Why do you need photos?

First let’s quickly discuss how a booking is made. This might seem silly to talk about but it’s necessary for the topic.

A booking is usually made by just one person. In most cases the whole group only contributes to decide the activity itself, then the organiser type in the group takes charge, do their research and maybe present a few options to the group before making the decision.

So the worst case scenario is that you are “spoiling” the experience for just one person who might not even consider it a spoiler but helpful information to make a choice between a few options.

The group comes up with the idea to do an escape room and the organiser takes charge.

In most cases they’ll find a big selection of escape rooms, all with good review scores.

Photos could be a deciding factor to beat the competition.

The average customer spends roughly 30-40 seconds on your rooms’ subpage. This means you have a very limited time to convince them that this is the game they want to play. And photos deliver all of this information in just a few seconds:

• The quality of the build

• The set design tells the story of the game

• The atmosphere

• The age group if you have people on the photos

In a competitive market you can’t afford to lose customers because they went with a different room simply because they had photos of their rooms and you don’t.

But I have posters for my rooms

Posters are great and photos don’t replace those, just complement them. Ask yourself this, would you watch a movie and spend your precious time simply based on a movie poster?

I think most of you would watch at least a short teaser trailer especially if you are going out to the cinema and have to spend your hard earned cash on the tickets.

What about the enthusiasts?

You might wonder, but what about the escape room enthusiasts? They are one of the most diehard fans so we definitely wouldn't want to disappoint them with spoilers.

Reality is that they only make up about 5% of your customer base. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a super important 5% as they do a lot of the word of mouth marketing for us. So I asked them.

Would you like to see photos of the room?

293 people voted in this poll.

I posted polls in the global escape room enthusiast group and the UK facebook group. And it turns out that even the most diehard fans of our genre prefers at least some photos of the rooms.

It’s simple, there are a vast amount of escape rooms to pick from and photos help them decide which one to play.

Photo best practices

Okay, you convienced me, what do I do now?

A flagship phone’s camera should suffice to take some awesome pics if you have an eye for these things but if you are unsure you should hire a professional.

You don’t need more than 3-5 images per room, that’s plenty to show off your awesome build. Follow these best practices:

• People will give them an idea of the age range and the type of people who visit

• No description about “how fun” your escape room can replace a wide smile and a laughing group of people

• Wide angle pics should be about the beginning of the escape room experience

• Close ups should be about the most intriguing looking stuff in your room

• Create the vibe and atmosphere of the room with lights.

💡Use your GM’s as actors to save on cost

💡Avoid stock photos. People might think that you’re hiding something.

And lastly, don’t show any major reveals. Duh! I know. But You want to show just enough to intrigue people not to spoil any major reveals.

People forget what they see

We are also constantly bombarded with visual content so by the time they show up to their booking even that one person will forget what they’ve seen. All that most people will take from the photos of your rooms is simply the vibe of the game and the quality they can expect.

But what if I still don’t want to show pictures?

That’s okay too, but my suggestion is to make this a conscious business decision, play into it and acknowledge the lack of photos.

💡Let’s say you have a haunted mansion style game. Say something about people going missing who tried to snap a photo of the place. You can even build this into your room’s briefing so they don’t take pics.

Or consider this. Still put up photos on your website but hide them behind a dropdown and warn people about the spoiler. People who are so particular about a spoiler free experience are safe and the rest 99% will thank you for making their life easier picking a room to play.

Need a Robin to your Batman?

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