Quintessence Hotel
A twelve-room Relais & Châteaux hotel on Anguilla, where every suite is different and every guest books from a few thousand miles away.
Challenge
Quintessence is Anguilla's first Relais & Châteaux hotel: twelve rooms and suites above Long Bay, each one individually designed rather than repeated to a template. Julian's, the hotel's bistro, holds a Wine Spectator Award of Excellence, and guests arrive to butler service and handcrafted interiors.
At that level the booking decision is specific. A guest is not choosing a hotel, they are choosing the Joseph Penthouse over the Bresil suite, from several thousand miles away, on the strength of whatever the website shows them. Photography answers what a room looks like. It cannot answer what it is like to stand in it, which is the question a guest is actually asking before committing to a rate like this.
Approach
Ninety-two panoramas covering the property the way a guest moves through it: the arrival fountain and entrance, the Grand Lobby and its staircase, the guest rooms and suites, each one different from the last, Julian’s and the Patio Bar, the Q Wine Cellar, the penthouse dining terrace, the pool and jacuzzi, the Aidan Spa cabanas, Keenie’s Boutique, the gardens and walkways, and Long Bay itself, down to a table set for two on the sand.
A good part of it was shot at dusk and after dark, because that is when the property looks like itself, with the lobby warm against a blue sky and the pool lit. It is also the hardest condition for 360° capture: there is no forgiving light, every fixture in the room ends up in frame, and each position has to be bracketed and blended so the highlights hold without the shadows going flat. The lobby and the pool terrace are each covered twice, in daylight and at night, so both readings of the hotel are there.
Outcome
The tour lets a prospective guest walk the hotel end to end and step into a specific named suite before booking, which is the part a gallery of stills cannot do. Each panorama is individually addressable, so a single room or the restaurant can be linked directly from anywhere it needs to appear.
It was a pleasure to work with Ben in creating an amazing 360 virtual tour of our luxury boutique hotel in Anguilla. He's creative and works hard. I would highly recommend him and 360 Immersion.
