Opening its doors in 2021, a&o Hostel can be found right in the heart of the Scottish capital. Boasting 131 rooms, it’s a space popular for backpackers and festival-goers alike. And so when the management team at a&o Edinburgh City approached the VendNation team seeking a business photo booth for their hostel lobby, we knew we needed to keep this core audience in mind.
The first part of the process as always was an explorative call with the business. Although our photo booths for businesses span many different venues up and down the UK, the hotels in our portfolio are still in the lower numbers. That meant we needed to understand the flow of the downstairs lobby in order to understand the best place to install this business-branded photo booth. We discovered that along with the many rooms of the hostel, there is plenty of communal space too including a lively and happening bar.
Bar Fifty is the hostel’s onsite entertainment space where guests can enjoy a range of delicious drinks before heading out to see what Edinburgh has to offer. This struck us as a perfect branding opportunity when it came to the design of this business photo booth. By cleverly positioning the booth nearby to the hostel reception and Bar Fifty, we’d be able to merge both elements of the business together. This way, the printouts from the photo booth would serve as a memory of both a pleasant stay at a&o and an entertaining evening at Bar Fifty.
So, how did we create this business photo booth?
In agreement that our design direction was the right way to go, the team at a&o and Bar Fifty gave us the go-ahead to get designing. Having learnt that the core clientele is backpackers, students, and festival-goers, we wanted to ensure the design spoke to that kind of fun mood.
So, working with our in-house designer, we considered how we could include as much colour and coolness as possible. We settled on a custom print with a repeating motif of swirls and curves. Set against a black background, we were able to really enhance the colours of the design which featured almost every hue of the rainbow. Then, within the business of this eye-catching pattern, we embedded the two logos. Whilst Bar Fifty featured in a circular emblem on the side panel of the business photo booth, the a&o logo – along with the web address for added marketing opportunities – was cleverly woven into the front of the design, right by the entrance to the booth.
Finally, to complete this business photo booth came the LED light. In a shade of luminous pink, the light was like a beacon, beckoning guests whether on their way out or way in.
And the result?
Having been installed right by the entrance to both vendors, the booth has been successful in capturing a very high percentage of footfall, providing the venue with a sizeable profit share each month. Plus, with the installation coming just before Christmas, the team were able to take advantage of our quick turnaround times and monetise on one of their busiest times of the year!
And, when the Edinburgh Fringe Festival comes around in August of this year – we’ll be able to provide the venue with a set of custom prints that will run throughout Fringe month. Giving their customers an extra special memento from their visit to the world-famous festival.
If you’d like to enquire about having a zero-cost business-branded photo booth installed in your venue before the summer peak, get in touch with our expert team today.
