To add a hotel virtual tour to WordPress, shoot the lobby, each room type, the restaurant and the pool with a 360° camera, upload the photos, and link them with Photo Sphere Viewer's free 360° Virtual Tour block. Put a short tour on each room-type page, a full tour on the homepage, and a hotspot in every room that links to booking.
Guests compare rooms before they book. A 360° view answers the questions photos leave open — how big is it really, what's the view, where is the desk — on your own site, rather than on a booking platform.
What to shoot
| Space | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Each room type | The decision guests are actually making. One scene per room type, two for suites. |
| Bathroom | Often the deciding detail — shower or bath, space, finish. |
| The view | Shoot from the window or balcony if the view is a selling point. |
| Lobby and reception | First impression, and reassurance for late arrivals. |
| Restaurant, bar, breakfast | Shows what's included. |
| Pool, spa, gym | High-value amenities that justify the rate. |
| Meeting and event rooms | For corporate and wedding bookings — often their own page. |
Shoot in daylight with lights on, beds made and clutter cleared. Put the camera at about chest height in the centre of the room, and keep yourself out of the shot (most 360° camera apps have a timer or remote).
What you need
- A 360° camera that exports stitched equirectangular images (2:1) — Ricoh Theta, Insta360, GoPro MAX, Qoocam and Kandao all work.
- WordPress with Photo Sphere Viewer installed (free).
Build the tour
- Upload the photos to the Media Library.
- On the page, insert the 360° Virtual Tour block (or the PSV Virtual Tour widget in Elementor).
- Select the scenes — for a room-type page, the room, bathroom and view.
- In each scene, click on the doorway to place a 3D arrow to the next scene.
- Give each scene a caption guests understand ("Deluxe King — bedroom", "Deluxe King — bathroom") and set its starting view to the best angle.
- Choose which scene opens first and publish.
There's no limit on tours or scenes in the free version, so build a short tour per room type and one property tour that starts in the lobby.
Add hotspots that sell
The free version includes five info hotspots per panorama, each with a label on hover and a panel with text and a link. Use them for:
- "Book this room" — linking to the room's booking page or your booking engine.
- Room details: bed size, square metres, sleeps how many.
- Amenities: "Nespresso machine", "Rain shower", "Blackout curtains".
With Photo Sphere Viewer Pro, hotspots are unlimited and each panel can include a photo — show the view from the balcony, the breakfast spread or the floor plan right where guests are looking.
Tour navigation for a whole property (Pro)
A full hotel tour can have twenty scenes or more. Pro adds:
- A scene gallery bar, so guests jump straight to "Pool" or "Suite" instead of walking there.
- A compass showing which way they're facing.
- A restricted viewing angle to hide the tripod or an unfinished ceiling.
- Full-resolution loading for large drone shots of the property — WordPress otherwise serves a downsized copy of uploads over 2560px.
Multilingual sites
Hotels often run sites in several languages. Photo Sphere Viewer is translation-ready and works with WPML and Polylang, so scene captions and hotspot text are translated with the rest of the page.
On phones
Many guests browse on their phone. The tour is touch-ready: guests drag to look around, and with gyroscope viewing they can look around by moving the phone (HTTPS required). Keep tours on room pages short so they load quickly, and use the toolbar's fullscreen button for the full property tour.
Where to put it
- Room-type pages: a three-scene tour just below the photo gallery.
- Homepage: one striking scene (pool, view or lobby) with auto-rotation, linking to the full tour.
- Weddings and events page: the venue spaces, with capacity in each hotspot.
- Google Business Profile: keep your 360° photos consistent with what's on your site.
For shooting and building tips that apply to any property, see how to create a real estate virtual tour. To weigh this against hosted platforms, see Kuula or Matterport vs a self-hosted tour. Photo Sphere Viewer Pro starts at $19.99 a year or $59.99 lifetime.