Hotel brochure: what to print, what to keep digital and how to check it before the fair

A hotel brochure is a short printed document that describes a property, its rooms, board concept and facilities for guests and the travel trade. Print only what will not change during the season; keep rates, opening hours and menus on a dated digital sheet that one named person updates.

The boxes arrive from the printer in April. By June the restaurant has new hours, one room type has been refurbished, and the facilities page describes a pool that is closed for repair. Nobody printed a price, and the brochure is still wrong. This article separates what belongs on paper from what belongs on a dated digital sheet, shows the two formats most hotels need, and gives the checks to run before the print order is confirmed.

Who actually reads your hotel brochure?#

Four different readers pick it up, and each one wants a different page: the guest at the desk, the visitor walking past a fair stand, the agency product manager and the meeting planner.

The desk reader is already in the building or about to book. They want restaurant hours, breakfast times, parking, wifi, check-out time, and a simple map of what is within walking distance. The fair stand reader gives you about twenty seconds: one clear sentence on what the property is (place, size, segment), one photo that matches reality, and a contact they can act on.

The agency product manager files the hotel brochure next to a rate sheet. They need room types with counts, what each board concept includes, season dates, transfer times, child policy and cancellation terms in summary. The meeting planner needs what a guest never asks: meeting room dimensions, capacity by setup, daylight, audiovisual equipment, break-out space, coffee breaks and accessibility features.

One document cannot serve all four well. Decide which two readers matter most this season and build for them; a brochure that tries to cover everyone ends up thin for each. Write from your own property's facts, not from a template you found online. A copied structure carries someone else's claims into your print run.

What belongs on paper and what belongs on a dated digital sheet?#

Paper carries what stays true for the life of the print run; anything that can change inside a season goes on a dated digital sheet that can be reissued in an hour.

The reason is practical, not stylistic. A printed rate reads as a promise, while a rate sheet can be replaced the same afternoon without reprinting anything. The same logic applies to menus, opening hours and renovation notices.

Describe board concepts in plain words, naming which meals, which drinks and which hours are included, rather than relying on a label that different readers interpret differently. Put a version code and a date in the footer of every printed piece, so the desk can tell last season's copy from this one at a glance. Keep one master content sheet with every line of text in every language, so a correction is made once and flows to print, PDF and the website.

How long should it be, and how many versions do you need?#

Two versions cover most hotels: a short fold for guests and the desk, and a longer trade version for fairs and agency meetings.

The short fold is four or six panels: one statement of what the property is, three or four photographs, room types in a line each, facilities, a map, a QR code and a contact. The trade version adds room counts per type, board inclusions, a season calendar, transfer times, meeting space with capacities, accessibility features, and a pointer to the rate sheet rather than the rates themselves.

At a fair the trade version goes into the bag of someone who asked a question; the short fold sits on the stand for people walking past. Printing only one of the two forces the wrong document on one of them. Page count is not quality: six pages with room counts and transfer times serve an agency better than twenty-four pages of lobby photography.

Print the trade version in a smaller first batch and reprint after the first fair tells you the real uptake, rather than storing boxes nobody opens. Fair preparation has its own calendar, and stand materials, appointments and follow-up need to be planned weeks before the doors open. Our travel trade fair preparation checklist covers that timeline separately.

Which language versions do you need, and who checks them?#

Print in the languages your own guest mix actually speaks, and have each version read by a native speaker before it goes to press.

Start from your own reservation data by guest nationality over the last two seasons. National arrival totals describe the country, not your hotel, and a property in one region can have a very different mix from the national picture. A common set for a Turkish resort is Turkish, English, German and Russian. Add Arabic or another language only when your own numbers support it; a badly translated extra version costs money and signals carelessness.

Machine translation is a draft, not a version. Room type names, board concepts and local place names break first, and a reader notices immediately. Give the translator the master content sheet, not a PDF, and ask for the terms your front desk already uses in that language so the brochure and the welcome desk sound like the same hotel.

Have one person per language sign off the final proof, and record who signed and when. When a complaint arrives about a mistranslated inclusion, you will want that record. Keep the language set stable across seasons where you can: agencies file your brochure by language and notice when a version disappears. Our language plan for your guest mix goes deeper on choosing and staffing languages.

What can you claim about your class and facilities?#

Claim only what your certificate and your building can prove, and keep the proof in a file the sales team can open.

Write the star class as certified, and only while the certificate is current. A class is a document issued to a facility, not an adjective the marketing team chooses. Every specific claim needs a definition and a backing document: sea view (which rooms, how many), renovated (which year, which areas), heated pool (which months, at what temperature).

Do not describe a service level the certificate does not cover. A four-star certified property that prints five-star language creates a complaint the front desk cannot answer. For accessibility, describe the actual features (ramp, lift dimensions, adapted bathroom, accessible parking) instead of a general label, and check them in person before print.

Build a proof file: certificate copy, renovation photographs with dates, equipment specifications, insurance documents and the photographer's contract. It takes an hour and settles arguments. If you print any price at all, confirm with your accountant or legal adviser how price-display rules apply to the currency and the market you are addressing. This article does not give that advice. The same discipline applies to your website, and our hotel website checklist covers the online side.

Photos: what has to be true before print?#

Every photograph must show a room or space a guest can actually be given, and you must hold the rights to print it in every channel you use.

Match the photograph to the room type it sits next to. If only some rooms of a type look like the picture, either shoot the standard room or say in one line which rooms are shown. People in shots need written permission: guests in recognizable images need a release, and staff need one too, along with a check that they still work at the hotel when the brochure is handed out.

Read the photographer's contract for print, digital and trade use, territory, duration and whether the hotel can reuse the images in later seasons without a new fee. Never use stock images or another property's photographs. It is the fastest way to lose an agency's trust, and it is the first thing a product manager checks against the room list.

Date every shoot. A lobby photographed in 2019 and refurbished in 2024 is a claim about the present that the building no longer supports. Keep the originals at print resolution, with the photographer's name and the shoot date in the file name, in a folder the marketing team can reach without asking anyone.

Print run, QR code and who updates the brochure after the season?#

Print in two batches, point the QR code at a page you control and can update, and name one person who owns the brochure after the season ends.

Estimate the run from real uses: stand quantities per fair, agency visits, the desk, and the sales team's own mailings. Then print a first batch and a second once the first fair shows the actual uptake.

The QR code should open a mobile page you control, not a PDF of the brochure. The point of the code is the current version, and a PDF is the version you already printed. Use a static code whose destination you can change, test it on two phones and one older device before the print order is confirmed, and check it again after any website change.

Name one owner and one review date: before each season, before each fair, and whenever a facility closes or a room type changes. Withdraw old copies from the desk and the stand on the day the new version arrives; two versions in circulation is how a guest ends up holding a page the hotel no longer honors. Archive the master files, fonts and the print-ready PDF with the owner, not only at the print house, so the next edition starts from a file you have rather than a file you hope exists.

What to do next#

Before the next print order, take last season's hotel brochure and mark every line as either paper or dated sheet. Anything you could not defend in the middle of the season moves to the sheet, and what remains is the brochure worth printing.