An empty room earns nothing: creator stays and the cost of unsold capacity

The number that matters is not the rate

Work out what one unsold night actually costs you to give away. For most boutique properties it is a fraction of the published rate. That is the real price of the collab, and it is the number to weigh the content against.

Do the same sum on a Friday in high season and the answer is different, which is the point. A creator stay is a use for capacity you were not going to sell, not a discount on capacity you were.

A guest experiences the room. A creator documents it.

A paying guest arrives, enjoys the place and leaves. What you get is the revenue, which is the deal. A creator arrives with the same room and leaves behind something you can use for a year: the morning light on the terrace, the walk down to the pool, the breakfast as it actually arrives.

That is a different kind of return, and it is worth being deliberate about. The property that gets the most out of this is the one that knows which shot it is missing before the booking is made.

The formats that work for a property

Not every collab type suits a stay. These three do most of the work:

• A room or villa tour, which is the single most useful asset a property can have and the one most websites are missing.
• A morning sequence: waking up, the view, breakfast. It sells the stay rather than the building.
• A Google Maps review with real photographs, which keeps working long after the Story has expired.

Protecting the nights you do sell

The worry every operator has is that collabs will eat into paying occupancy. The answer is to decide in advance which nights are available and stick to it. Midweek, low season, the room type that sells last.

Claris lets you set that yourself rather than negotiating it each time, so a request for a Saturday in August is never a conversation you have to have.

Where this works hardest

Bali and Phuket have the clearest case, because the seasons are pronounced and the villa stock is large enough that visibility is the whole game. Jakarta is different: the occupancy problem there is weekends rather than midweek, since the city empties when the business travellers go home, and the content that helps is about the neighbourhood as much as the room.

Dubai sits apart again. The summer is the quiet season, the standard of photography that visitors expect is higher, and a property is competing with buildings that have their own in-house production.