How PhotoShelter Helps Power the Boston Harbor Hotel Brand

Capturing the Essence of Boston’s Vibrant Culture

The Boston Harbor Hotel, a five-star, five-diamond luxury hotel, prides itself on offering exceptional guest experiences. From stunning harbor views to award-winning culinary creations, their brand is synonymous with elegance and sophistication. With a large array of events and a passion for showcasing Boston’s rich culture, the hotel’s marketing team relies on a huge library of visual assets to tell their brand’s story.

The Challenge: Navigating a Sea of Disorganized Digital Content

Christine Whitnel, Marketing Manager, and Marc Gonzalez, Social Media & Marketing Coordinator, faced challenges managing digital assets for the hotel including the Boston Wine & Food Festival, a two and half month program featuring over 40 events at Boston Harbor. Before PhotoShelter, they struggled with a disconnected content management system that made accessing and organizing photos challenging and time-consuming.

• Assets everywhere on outdated systems. Previously, Christine relied on a traditional company drive, which was not only outdated but also required VPN access for remote work, complicating the process of retrieving photos. Marc’s experience was equally chaotic; he was managing photos across multiple platforms like Google Photos and Dropbox without the benefits of a unified system.
• Difficulty attracting customers during the slower seasons. The hotel’s marketing efforts intensify during slower seasons to attract customers, necessitating quick access to relevant and engaging content to support events like their annual wine and food festival. However, this wasn’t possible with the hotel’s current systems in place.
• Managing usage rights manually. Handling the rights and usage information for numerous photos and contributors was a manual and error-prone process with the potential for mistakes and inefficiencies – which put the hotel’s valuable assets at risk.

“In the past, I was using a company drive at a previous employer. It was old school, where you would receive photos from a vendor, and I would take those photos and save them on the company drive. Then, I would have to go through them all, and it was quite cumbersome and not digitally organized. And if I wanted to pull those photos from home, I’d have to be on a VPN.”

– Christine Whitnel, Marketing Manager, The Boston Harbor Hotel

The Solution: A Centralized Library Built for Easy Collaboration 

The transition to PhotoShelter marked a significant improvement in Christine and Marc’s content management and distribution. This platform has simplified their workflows, making daily tasks more manageable and effective.

• All assets, easy to find, with AI-powered search. PhotoShelter’s AI Visual Search tool and advanced tagging capabilities have transformed the way the Boston Harbor Hotel team organizes and retrieves images. Marc notes, “The AI tools really are so helpful to be able to search anything and find it…the tagging is really huge for me, especially from a social media standpoint, being able to see who the photographer is, so we can correctly credit them.”
• Easy collaboration with stakeholders. With PhotoShelter, sharing photos with everyone from external agencies to internal web developers is straightforward and secure. Christine appreciates how partners can independently access needed photos without constant guidance, “Our website agency, who helps us with emails, can go into PhotoShelter and be able to identify something from our Spring 2024 photo album or from a photo shoot without having to call.”
• Simple rights and usage management. PhotoShelter simplifies the management of rights and usage information, providing peace of mind when working with external partners and contributors. “Our PR agency knows exactly what rights they have for each photo,” Christine explains.

“To me, [PhotoShelter] is a silent partner in a lot of ways. It’s something that’s incredibly helpful, it’s something that makes our lives so easy and so great.”

– Christine Whitnel, Marketing Manager,The Boston Harbor Hotel

The DAM Partner Behind Boston Harbor Hotel’s Marketing

PhotoShelter has become vital for the Boston Harbor Hotel team. As Christine Whitnel puts it, “We’re in PhotoShelter every single day… it’s that useful.”  Marc Gonzalez agrees, calling it his “right hand” at work.  By simplifying how they manage and share their visuals, PhotoShelter has not only made their jobs easier but it’s also given them more power to connect with guests and showcase what makes the hotel, and Boston, so special.

“PhotoShelter’s value is incredible. The AI tools, the filtering, having all our photos in one place… it is very helpful. We don’t just have an Instagram, a Facebook, and a LinkedIn account. Marc runs multiple channels. We have our weddings accounts, the wine festival has its own Instagram and Facebook, we have a Pinterest specifically for weddings, etc. So we have a lot of different channels for a single property and it’s great being able to upload everything into PhotoShelter not only for influencer collaborations or photographers, photos that Marc is taking, but also for our 70+ weddings a year.” 

– Christine Whitnel, Marketing Manager, The Boston Harbor Hotel