360° virtual tours are helping Care Homes to fill beds!

Over the last year I have shot in excess of 50 virtual tours for Care Homes across the UK.  Before Covid-19, there were still a huge amount of businesses getting in touch with me from within the Care Home sector, because they wanted to showcase their homes digitally in an interactive and engaging way to potential new customers. Then when the pandemic hit a virtual tour quickly became a necessity!

One of the Care Home groups I have been working closely with is The Abbeyfield Society. Myself and their Digital Marketing Manager, Lucie Walker, recently studied the analytics of their virtual tours from the past couple of years. We identified that these Care Homes have seen a dramatic increase in enquiries and new residents; resulting in higher occupancies and much fewer empty beds. It’s evident that this new marketing approach has been very successful! 

This discovery led me to discuss this with some of my other Care Home clients. I was filming some customer testimonial videos for Oakland Care in Essex, and I asked three family members who were being interviewed “How did you discover the home?”.  Two of them told me they decided to visit the home because of the virtual tour! This further concreted my earlier findings; it was at this point I realised just how powerful my virtual tours are for the Care Home sector. The families told me the main benefits of the tour was being able to view it online from the comfort of their own home with their loved ones, and they could look at it 24/7 and as many times as they like, as well as managing their expectations. It’s also really beneficial for families who live far away from the home, perhaps even living abroad.

Looking for a Care Home for a loved one can be a stressful and emotional experience, and having the added strain of taking time out of your day to call and visit homes that may not even be suitable can be frustrating, and adds unwanted stress to the whole situation. 360° photography helps to transform a stressful, time consuming Care Home search into a stress-free, efficient and convenient process for all; including the Care Home staff.

My virtual tours are easy to implement, and my extensive experience in working for Care Home’s means I am able to shoot the tour quickly and efficiently with minimal disruption, whilst also ensuring the presentation is aesthetically pleasing.

Virtual tours generate 46% more sales, in comparison to still images (Panomatics.net).

Once your tour is live, your potential customers will be able to easily navigate around the home, and see the facilities and services the home has to offer. If you’re looking to include more information in your tour, I can include a variety of different multimedia’s within the tour itself. For example, superimpose the home’s promo video on a Television in the tour, or add a pop up with daily activities or a sample menu. The list is endless!  You are even able to start a live video call from within the tour, so a member of the team can talk to customers online, whilst they are viewing the home.

If you would like to find out more about the virtual tours that I am able to offer, then please call me on 01903 905212 or email info@nickpowellphotography.com.