A tourist office, a regional or departmental tourism board or a group of municipalities sells a promise first: the promise of a place, an atmosphere, a moment worth living. That promise is judged in a few seconds, often on a phone screen, long before a visitor looks at a price or a calendar. This is where video earns its place. We are a video, photo and drone studio working for businesses and brands, and in this article we explain how a destination can use video in a way that is useful, measurable and honest, with no promise of miracle results.
Why destinations need video
Tourism is not a marginal sector. According to figures published by the French government, it accounted for about 8% of France’s GDP in 2024, with 71 billion euros in international receipts and around 2 million direct and indirect jobs. Every territory competes for its share, and travellers’ attention is its first resource.
A traveller’s journey follows four moments: they dream, they plan, they book, then they share. Video can play a part at each stage, with a different role each time.
The planning phase is long. In a 2023 Expedia Group study of 5,713 travellers who had booked online (seven markets, including France), respondents spent on average 303 minutes, over five hours, with travel content in the 45 days before booking, and viewed 141 pages on average. The study does not single out video, but it shows something important: a potential visitor meets your destination many times before booking. Each of those encounters is a chance to be clear and memorable, or to be forgotten.
On usage, Kantar’s research for Google (April 2022, Asia-Pacific: Australia, Indonesia, India, Japan, South Korea) found that more than half of the travellers surveyed turn to video touchpoints during their journey, and 41% of them use YouTube. This is not a European sample; we cite it as a sign of direction, not as a measure of your own audience.
Finally, Wyzowl’s annual survey (late 2025, 266 respondents, marketing professionals and consumers) reports that 84% of consumers want to see more videos from brands in 2026, and 85% say they have been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a video. These are self-reported answers from a small sample across all industries: they describe a climate, they guarantee nothing for a given destination.
Survey figures, not guarantees. The statistics above come from self-reported surveys or specific geographic samples. They justify investing in imagery; they do not justify promising a number of overnight stays.
What video can change for a territory
Well designed, video acts on several economic levers, each with its limits:
- Attractiveness of the place. A film shows light, scale, sound and pace of life. A brochure or a single photo does this less well.
- Booking of activities and experiences. Seeing a boat trip, an estate visit or a craft workshop reassures people and makes them want to try, provided the film points clearly to the booking.
- Accommodation. Hotels, holiday cottages (gîtes) and campsites benefit from showing the welcome, the spaces and the surroundings rather than relying only on platform photos.
- Direct bookings. Quality content on your own site and social channels is a way to bring visitors to you rather than to an intermediary. It does not guarantee they will book direct, but it gives them a reason to come through your pages.
- Local shops and restaurants. Markets, producers and restaurants are part of the experience; showing them invites visitors to spend locally.
- Events and festivals. An aftermovie documents the past edition and helps persuade partners and audiences to join the next one.
- Shoulder and off-season. Showing a place in autumn or winter gives people a reason to visit outside summer. The result depends on what is on offer at those dates: businesses need to be open.
The formats a tourist office needs
The aim is not one film but a coherent range produced from the same shoots. Think of it as a ladder: from the most ambitious format, which defines the destination’s identity, down to the shortest cuts that keep social channels alive.
- The destination film. One to three minutes that set the identity of the place and serve as the centrepiece on the website, at trade fairs and in outreach.
- The seasonal series. One episode per season, to show the territory all year and feed an editorial calendar.
- Aerial footage. Drones reveal landscapes, coastline, heritage sites and scale. See our drone for business page.
- Partner showcase films. A campsite, a sailing club, a museum, an estate: a 30 to 90 second film per activity, usable by the office and by the partner.
- Testimonials from locals and hosts. Sincere local voices rather than institutional narration.
- Vertical social cuts of 15 to 30 seconds. Framed for 9:16 from the shoot, with subtitles, for social networks.
- Event aftermovies. A rhythmic summary, useful for communication and for finding sponsors.
- A photo library with rights. Images whose use is clearly assigned to the office and its partners.
- Accessibility and multilingual versions. Systematic subtitles (also useful for sound-off viewing) and versions in French, English and Spanish, or other languages depending on your visitors.
For our general approach, see our business video page and our business photography page.
Twelve months of presence, not just summer
A territory changes with the seasons, and its content should show it. A single shoot in July leaves the rest of the year without fresh images; spreading shoots across the year allows continuous communication and supports the shoulder seasons.
In practice, this means planning shoots ahead with a shot list per season and leaving room for weather. This organisation costs less than a series of improvised shoots and makes the publishing calendar more regular.
For partners: a shared content bank
A territory is more than a tourist office. It is a set of campsites, water-sports centres, museums, markets, shops, restaurants and event organisers. Few of them can afford quality visuals alone; together, they can.
A shared content bank works like this: the office leads a joint shoot, each partner appears in a film or a set of photos, and usage rights are assigned in writing to the office and the partners concerned. The benefit is threefold:
- For the partner, professional images it could not fund alone, to reuse on its website, social channels and print.
- For the office, visual consistency across all the territory’s communications.
- For the visitor, a clearer story: they understand what to do, where to stay, where to eat and when to come.
It takes a simple brief: a list of partners, requested shots, usage rules, the length of the rights, any credit line, and shared storage where everyone finds their files. You can see our work in our portfolio.
Measuring return honestly
A councillor or a tourist office director will rightly ask: “what does it bring in?”. The honest answer is that you can measure links in a chain, rarely a single cause. A booking may come from a film seen three weeks earlier, a recommendation, a search engine and a third-party platform, all at once.
The chain is built like this:
- Views: tracked on each platform, with completion rate rather than play count alone.
- Site visits: links tagged with UTM parameters, to tell apart what comes from a film, a network or a partner.
- Clicks to the booking engine: events tracked in your analytics tool, including clicks to partners’ booking pages.
- Bookings: promo codes dedicated to video campaigns, or a question asked at booking (“how did you hear about us?”).
- Brand-lift effects: surveys of visitors or a panel, which remain self-reported.
- Partner-shared assets: how many partners use the content bank, and on which channels.
This table links each objective to a format and an indicator:
| Objective | Video format | Indicator (KPI) |
|---|---|---|
| Raise awareness of the destination | Destination film, aerial footage | Views, completion rate, self-reported awareness |
| Generate website visits | Vertical social cuts, seasonal series | UTM-tagged visits, page views, session length |
| Drive activity bookings | Partner showcase films | Clicks to booking engine, bookings with a dedicated code |
| Fill the shoulder season | Autumn and winter seasonal series | Visits and bookings in target months, compared with previous years |
| Support direct bookings | Accommodation and host videos | Share of direct bookings, enquiries |
| Promote an event | Aftermovie, vertical teaser | Registrations, tickets sold, shares, sponsors recruited |
| Unite partners | Shared content bank | Number of partners using it, materials produced |
The legal framework in France: what to check
A few points need attention before any shoot. We handle them with you, but it helps to know them. Rules change, so always check official sources on the date of the shoot.
- Drones. Professional flights are governed by European and national rules: operator registration, remote pilot training, respect for restricted zones, checking restrictions on the official map, and in some cases prior declaration or authorisation (urban areas, near sensitive sites, nature parks). See our drone for business page.
- Image rights of people. An identifiable person filmed in the foreground should in principle have given written consent. For locals and hosts, plan for signed releases. For an event, informing the public helps.
- Private property. A facade, an estate or a shop may appear, but commercial use of private property may require the owner’s agreement depending on the case. It is better to ask.
- Music. Commercial music cannot be used freely. You need a suitable licence (a music library, original composition or clearance with rights societies).
- GDPR and tracking. Audience tracking is subject to the French data protection authority’s (CNIL) consent rules. UTM parameters are not personal data in themselves, but tools reading traffic may set trackers: a consent banner and an up-to-date privacy policy are needed.
An example project in three phases
Here is a typical structure, to adapt to the size of the territory and the budget. It is a working outline, not a client case.
- Phase 1, audit and storyline. We clarify goals (awareness, off-season, bookings), priority audiences and languages. We list your assets and partners, then write the narrative thread, the shot list and the shooting calendar.
- Phase 2, shoots across the seasons. We film on the ground and by drone, record interviews with locals and partners, and build the photo library. Vertical shots are planned from the start.
- Phase 3, distribution and measurement. We edit the destination film, partner films and short cuts, with subtitles and language versions. We propose a distribution plan, tagged links and regular reviews to adjust what follows.
What video cannot do. It does not replace a quality offer, a warm welcome, transport access or an efficient booking engine. It does not guarantee a number of visitors. A beautiful film that leads to a confusing booking page will lose its effect, which is why we always look at the journey as a whole.
Where to start
For a tourist office, the first step is modest: define one priority goal, pick two or three formats and plan a first shoot. A destination does not need to do everything at once. Within a few months, a well thought-out content bank feeds social channels, the website, trade fairs, press kits and partners’ communications.
Let’s talk about your destination.
Tell us what you want to show, to whom and in which seasons, and we will propose a clear plan.
Sources: info.gouv.fr, “Tourisme : un levier de croissance pour l’économie française” (2024 figures); DGE, Comité interministériel du tourisme 2025; Expedia Group, Path to Purchase Research (2023); Think with Google / Kantar, YouTube Travel Consumer Research (2022); Wyzowl, Video Marketing Statistics (late 2025 survey).