Case Study: Virtual Tour for Crowne Plaza Terrigal Pacific
Intro / Summary
A hotel virtual tour can show guests and event planners far more than photos or floor plans. That’s why I was asked to create a virtual tour at Crowne Plaza Terrigal Pacific on the Central Coast. It showcases their newly renovated meeting and conference spaces in multiple layouts.
The result was a large‑scale, multi‑day project. It captured many room configurations and delivered a smooth, user‑friendly virtual tour system. The hotel is still using this system more than five years later.
Client
Crowne Plaza Terrigal Pacific, a leading hotel and conference venue on the Central Coast.
Challenge
The hotel had recently completed renovations to its meeting and conference spaces and wanted a way to showcase them online. The need wasn’t just for polished marketing images. Event planners, corporate clients, and wedding organisers wanted to see exactly how the rooms could look in different configurations.
Several challenges made this project complex:
- Multiple photographers: I was sharing the space with the hotel’s stills photographer and their architect’s photographer. Coordination and timing were essential.
- Room configurations: Many spaces could be reconfigured using large operable walls to suit different events such as meetings, conferences, or weddings. Each variation needed to be captured.
- Navigation standards: The project needed to align with Google Street View standards, while also offering a custom overlay for use on the hotel’s locally managed website (built by Talk Agency).
- Scale: Shooting took place over two days, with the first morning session covering a full set of base images, followed by a second session for alternate layouts.
Solution
I created a complete virtual tour system for the renovated spaces.
- Full hotel virtual tour: Covering entry points, corridors, and each meeting room in multiple configurations, creating a way-finding experience that felt seamless and intuitive.
- Google Street View compliance: Publishing the tours directly to the hotel’s Google Business Profile, where they remain live today and continue to rank well in search results.
- Custom overlay: Building a flexible overlay that allowed the hotel to link directly to specific rooms or starting points, making the tour easy to embed and reuse on their website.
- Collaboration: Worked alongside multiple photographers over two days with minimal disruption, capturing high‑volume content while maintaining quality.
Results
The virtual tour for Crowne Plaza Terrigal Pacific has delivered lasting value:
- Utility: Event planners, corporate organisers, and famils managers can explore the conference and meeting rooms online, gaining a sense of scale and flexibility that traditional stills or floor plans cannot provide.
- Longevity: Originally shot in November 2019 and launched in January 2020, the tour continues to be used more than 5 years later.
- Marketing impact: By offering an interactive virtual tour in addition to photos and floor plans, the hotel demonstrates transparency and makes it easier for decision‑makers to choose their venue.
- Capability showcase: The success of this project demonstrates my ability to handle large, complex hospitality shoots where multiple stakeholders and technical standards come into play.
- Unrivalled value: Virtual tours are amongst the most cost effective ways to showcase a space with extended value over time. This virtual tour will continue to be valuable for as long as they retain the current decor and layout.
Thanks
Crowne Plaza Terrigal Pacific was fantastic to work with throughout this project. Their team worked well with all stakeholders to make the space available. They ensured we, as photographers, had coordination throughout. They were open to my recommendations and trusted me to deliver a complete tour system.