Virtual Tours for Pubs and Bars: How to Show Your Atmosphere

Virtual Tours for Pubs and Bars: How to Show Your Atmosphere

The most common mistake in promoting a bar or pub is trying to describe the venue with night-time photos. They look great, but they do not answer the question customers are actually asking.

How people decide which bar to go to

Choosing a bar works differently from choosing a restaurant. At a restaurant the menu is decisive; at a bar the menu hardly matters. People go to a bar for the vibe, and they want to know three things about it in advance: how crowded it will be, how loud it will be, and whether it is the right place for their group.

None of these can be shown in a photo. A lit-up bar photo taken at night looks great, but it tells you nothing about the size of the venue, the spacing between tables, whether there is a garden or where the stage is.

That is why the job of a virtual tour in this industry is not to copy the atmosphere but to map out the venue. Visitors are looking for the spot where their group will sit.

Shoot at night or during the day?

This is the most debated question in the industry, and the answer surprises most owners: shoot during the day.

The reason is technical. A 360° panorama is made by stitching together images taken from the same point in different directions. In a venue at night the light is extremely uneven: the back bar is bright, the corner table is nearly dark, the stage is a riot of color. Under these conditions stitching leaves visible seams, dark areas come out noisy and colored lights distort the real colors.

A shoot done during the day or early evening, with all the venue lights fully on, shows the real size and layout of the space clearly.

So where does the atmosphere go? Atmosphere is not the job of the virtual tour. Instagram, night-time photos and customer reviews carry it. The tour's job is to show the space where that atmosphere happens. The two do not replace each other; they complement each other.

How many scenes do you need?

A scene is a single 360° image taken where the tripod is set up in the venue. In pubs and bars, the main factor that determines the number of scenes is the number of separate seating areas.

For a mid-sized venue with an indoor area and a garden, the typical layout is the one shown above: 11–13 scenes. A small bar with a single room is done in 7–8 scenes. A venue with several floors, a terrace and a separate games area can reach 18 scenes.

In venues with a garden, the outdoor shoot needs separate planning; the difference between garden light and indoor light is managed by choosing the right time to shoot.

Showing the separate areas

This is where a virtual tour helps a bar the most. Most venues have sections with different characters: the front of the bar for people standing, the back room for people sitting and talking, the garden for smokers and summer evenings, and the games area for pool and table football.

Customers know which of these they want, but they do not know which ones the venue has. When the scene transitions in the tour separate these sections clearly, they directly answer the question "is there a spot here for us?"

Adding info cards and hotspots to the transitions between scenes works especially well here: a short note like "Garden: seats 40, covered and heated" does more work than the scene itself.

Preparing for shoot day

Because a bar shoot happens during closed hours, preparation works differently from other industries.

• The shoot takes place while the venue is closed and after cleaning, usually before noon
• Tables should be set for service: an empty table is better than a messy one, but a set table is better than an empty one
• The bottle display behind the bar should be tidied; the most visible shelf should be the neatest
• Chairs should not be left upside down on the tables
• Cables, crates and empty kegs on the floor should be removed
• All venue lighting should be on, with stage lights kept at a neutral tone

From our archive: 40 pubs and bars

The G360 archive includes virtual tours of 40 pubs and bars. These venues are spread across 11 provinces and 21 districts; the busiest province is Antalya (eight venues), followed by Muğla (seven), Ankara (six) and Tekirdağ (four). It is no coincidence that Antalya and Muğla stand out: they are the two regions with the highest tourist density.

Together, these 40 venues have received a total of 15,399 reviews on Google Maps, with a median of 169 reviews. That is the third-highest median in the archive, behind only restaurants (420) and hotels (340).

Their average Google rating, however, is 4.16, below the archive-wide 4.28. Read together, these two figures tell a clear story: bar customers leave a lot of reviews but rate more critically. The most likely explanation is that the experience at night-time venues depends on the crowd, the music and that particular night.

The practical takeaway: standing out on rating alone is hard in this industry, because everyone sits in the same band. What sets a venue apart is letting people see in advance what it offers.

The full industry breakdown is in the data report, and completed projects are in our pub and bar portfolio.

What changes for venues that also serve food

Many pubs also serve food. In that case the tour has to do two jobs at once: show the night-time setting and the daytime dining layout.

In practice, rather than showing two different setups of the same space, you show the space itself. Tables are set for food service, and the bar and seating areas are explored in separate scenes. If the food side dominates, the approach in our restaurant shoot guide also works.

Menu photos do not go in the tour: menus change, the tour stays. It is better to upload the menu to your Google Business Profile separately.

Summary

For pubs and bars, a virtual tour is not there to make the venue look prettier but to settle the customer's question "is this right for us?" It is shot during the day, it shows the separate areas and it leaves the atmosphere to other channels.

You can work out how many scenes your venue needs on the pricing page, and read what to look for when choosing a provider in a separate guide.