A virtual tour is a platform for showing your space in a unique way using multiple interconnected 360° 'scenes' where viewers can look in all directions (up, down, left, right) and get a feel for the space and accurate layout that is not possible from normal 'flat' photographs. Viewers can 'tour' from scene to scene via a menu system or via signpost indicators (where available) and can view Info points within each scene giving them further information such as images, text, videos, audio files, URL links, CTA buttons etc. This gives viewers a strong sense of 'being there' and can increase the engagement, dwell and conversion rates of your viewers and potential purchasers.

Info points are interactive elements within a scene that gives information about that scene, allowing you to draw attention to a particular feature or to further explain. They are presented on screen as an information button and offer text and rich media such as images, videos (locally hosted or YouTube embeds), forms, HTML, URLs to further information, call to action buttons, download links for brochures, map embeds etc.. You can add multiple Info points to a scene if you wish. Info points can also be used to give a more structured, guided tour by a video presenter or an audio voice-over.

Costs depend on a number of factors, including the total number of scenes you require in your tour, its geographic location and other factors. There are no ongoing fees or subscriptions if you host the tour yourself or our yearly support packages are reasonably priced if you prefer us to host for you. We do not charge any extra for an Info point in each scene of your tour if you provide us with the text and media. Nor do we charge extra for aerial drone overviews if your tour has more than 25 scenes. We do not charge VAT on our prices, so the price agreed is the price paid. Schools that use our sister business school-photos.co.uk for their pupil portraits receive a substantial discount on their virtual tour.

Contact us with a brief description of your space, your geographic location, how many scenes you would like included and the type of media that you would like in your Info points. We shall then return your query with our quote and, should we be successful, consult on the next stage including a calendar 'window'. Each 360° scene can take up to ten minutes to photograph on site. Images are post-processed and the tour created using dedicated software. We provide you with a link to preview your tour and we discuss and make any amendments necessary until we are both happy. Once satisfied and final payment made, we provide you with all the necessary files for you to self host the tour on your server or alternatively we can host the tour for you on a fast CDN with ongoing support for a small annual charge.

Yes, you can self-host. Tours are provided to all clients as complete, fully self contained, fully responsive, HTML5 compliant website files. Thus, if you want to host the tours yourself on your own server, you are very welcome to. Alternatively, we are happy to host for you if you purchase our yearly support package that not only includes hosting on our CDN servers, but also free updates to your tour code (e.g. amending Info points), security updates, reduced costs for new scenes to be added and any and all email advice and support from us to help you get the most out of your tour.

Integration is straightforward. The virtual tour is either hosted by us on a CDN or you can self host and upload the self contained folder to an area on your web server. Once online and you have the direct URL link to the tour, you can simply link to it and it will open and fill the entire area of the browser window (on mobile and desktop). Alternatively, if you want to embed the tour as an iframe within another page, then this can be as simple as cutting and pasting a single line of code into the HTML files on your web server. There are no third party external dependencies required and linking is usually just a 'cut and paste' of our embed codes into your sites HTML code.

We can photograph 'for sale' properties. Real estate virtual tours give an accurate perspective of the property (especially compared to ultra wide angle lens stills), which can reduce the number of tyre kicker viewings. Real estate tends to have different requirements and priorities to most commercial virtual tours, such as being very short term (hopefully) and requiring a different style. They are thus treated differently in the way they are photographed, timeframe urgency and the resulting tour - e.g. obvious lines of sight from one scene to the next requiring movement 'on a walking heading' etc. The link can then be distributed along with your listing, such as on rightmove or zoopla and sometimes integrated directly. They are also priced differently. Please contact us to discuss.

Yes. Aerial scenes photographed by a drone are a fantastic means of showing the locality in which you are based, and can serve as an excellent introductory 'index' page to your tour. Aerial drone views at up to 400 feet / 120 metres high are attention grabbing showing a perspective not normally seen. For scenes that have restricted airspace or with local hindrance (e.g. hedges, car parks etc), we can photograph at up to 7 metres high from a pole. We can also use Google's Earth Studio 360° spherical renders for even higher elevation scenes for much larger geographic areas.

Yes you can, if you have the permission of the people in the scene. For example, at a hotel we can use staff members for the photographs or a school will have already asked parents for permission to use pupil's faces in their marketing materials and website. It is also possible to have no people in your shots if that is what you prefer. Having full faces in the shots, perhaps showing people enjoying themselves and having fun, adds a great deal to the impact of the tour and is a major advantage of our type of private tours over others, such as Google hosted street-view, which automatically blur all faces.

This depends on the complexity of the tour and the number of scenes / info points that you require. Fairly simple tours may only take a few days to turn around, and others might take a few weeks. We can also work to your tight deadlines if necessary.

Yes, 'deep linking' into a tour is possible. Tours can begin at a particular scene within the wider virtual tour. For example, you may have a page on your website about your hot tub lodges and want a 360° scene to demonstrate, so you could embed or link directly to the Lodge 2 Hot Tub in the sample tour. This is a very useful feature as you do not need to host multiple times while still giving a dedicated appearance where needed.

We can certainly edit images while they are being processed, including removing wall marks, floor scrapes, blurring features (such as alarm systems, neighbouring gardens) etc. We will need to be informed of any photo editing requests in advance. Complicated photo image editing that has to take place after initial tour presentation might require a fee to be agreed in advance. Editing of tours after creation is also possible, such as amending info points, adding info points etc..

All tours are created and custom built to your design requirements. This can include your on-screen logos, fonts, colour palette, favicon or constantly viewed call to action buttons (e.g. 'check availability' or 'book now' linking to external pages) such that all tours look like part of your site, rather than tacked on.

We typically take about ten minutes at each scene, so multiply this by the number of scenes you want in your tour, not forgetting an allowance for travelling time between each scene. We can work around your calendar as best as possible, such as if you only have a limited time between departing and arriving guests. Please note we do not 'dress' any scenes and your space will need to be presented to us as you wish it to appear in your tour.

Good weather is important to make your tour look as bright and welcoming as possible - especially important for holiday letting purposes. We will together arrange a window of date opportunities where we can hopefully have at least some fine weather. Aerial photographs also bring special weather restrictions such as wind. Purely internal tours, or tours that do not requires bright conditions, can be taken in any weather of course.

We cover the whole of South Wales, where we are based, but we are happy to cover destinations further afield. Please get in touch, wherever you are.

Facebook and Instagram allow for single equirectangular images (the flat distorted .jpg image before it is viewed in 360°) to be uploaded to your page so that viewers can interact with your preferred scene. We can help with this, as it requires very specific IPTC metadata to be set. It can be an effective 'lure' to link prospects to your main tour and attract attention, especially for a promotion or sale e.g. ‘would you like to sleep in this room tonight?’ You can also upload 360° scenes to your Google Business page for its SEO benefits.

We are happy to take a small number of illustrative stills at the same time as your tour if you do not have suitable material readily available, perhaps to illustrate your Info points better. We can discuss this at the consultation stage beforehand.

We can remove any panophoto branding, however small, from your tours if you so wish. Current own branding might include links in menu or logos at the downward (nadir) viewpoint. Details available on request.

All source code is provided to customers. We can also work with your web developer if needed. All code is open source, un-encrypted, lean, un-minified, well commented, well structured and you are free to make further changes if you or your developer understands the HTML, PHP and JS code. This is very much in your interests as you know your investment is safe, available long term, available locally (see below) and completely under your control - unlike tours such as matterport which rely on costly subscriptions, are held on remote servers and are in danger of disappearing if subscriptions are cancelled or the server is removed.

It can, though you can't just view the index.html page in a browser on an offline computer. If no internet access is to be expected, such as at a trade show, then you can either a) permit your browser to view local content (and thus overcome the security features built in to browsers) or b) install and set up a localhost local sever on your computer so that it acts like an internet server, such as XAMPP, WAMP, MAMP, LAMP etc. This is a major benefit of having no required external dependencies in the code. Offline video content? Please note this will not include online 'Info Point' content such as Youtube videos. However, if you think you will need to use tours offline on a regular basis, then videos and other media can be held locally so they will play without an internet connection.