Sonesta Integration Guide

Enhance your Sonesta brand website with immersive virtual tours that help guests and planners explore your property before they book. This guide shows you how to integrate your tours into your Overview and Meeting Spaces pages using the Visiting Media platform.

Why Add Virtual Tours to Your Sonesta Website

Virtual tours on your brand website create powerful first impressions and help you stand out from the competition:

• Go beyond capacity charts: Help planners understand flow, layout, and ambiance in ways specs alone can't convey
• Deliver instant virtual site tours: Give planners a quick, self-guided look at your meeting spaces—helping them assess fit and flow right from the listing
• Inspire confidence: Virtual tours provide clarity and transparency, helping planners visualize their meeting space and feel more confident choosing your property
• Accelerate event inquiries: With fewer questions and more clarity upfront, planners are more likely to reach out and move forward faster

Value drivers: Site tours, event bookings, meeting space marketing

What Content Works Best on Sonesta Sites

Different content types serve different purposes on your website:

For Overview Pages

Create a comprehensive first impression of your entire property.

Recommended content:

• Enhanced 3D Models – Let visitors walk through key spaces virtually
• 360° Photos – Provide realistic views of lobbies, public spaces, and amenities
• Aerial 360° – Show your property's location and surrounding area in context
• Nearby Attraction Tours – Highlight local destinations that appeal to leisure travelers
• Video Productions – Engage visitors with dynamic, narrated property walkthroughs

For Meeting Spaces Pages

Focus on event capabilities and help planners visualize their functions.

Recommended content:

• Enhanced 3D Models – Let planners navigate through meeting spaces and ballrooms
• 360° Photos – Offer detailed views of spaces and different room setups
• CGI Setups – Show various configurations and layout possibilities

How to Add Your Virtual Tour

Follow these steps to create and submit your tour for integration:

Step 1: Build Your Tour

If you have Plus tier:

1. Log into your Visiting Media platform account
2. Navigate to your Asset Library
3. Select a single immersive asset that captures the essence of your property—typically an Enhanced 3D Model or Aerial 360°

If you have Pro tier:

1. Log into your Visiting Media platform account
2. Build a multi-asset custom tour focused on showcasing public spaces and guest-facing amenities:
   • Hotel lobbies and public spaces
   • Restaurants, bars, spas, pools, lounges
   • Aerial 360° tours of property or surroundings
   • Videos and narrated welcome tours
3. Arrange assets to match your ideal discovery flow
4. Name your tour clearly to identify its purpose:
   • Distribution - Sonesta Website - Overview Page
   • Distribution - Sonesta Website - Meeting Spaces
5. Open tour customization settings and configure:
   • Menus: Hidden
   • Property Info Card: Disabled
   • Digital Business Card: Disabled

Step 2: Add Your Tour to Your Sonesta Website

Now you're ready to integrate your virtual tour into your Sonesta website:

1. Log into your Sonesta Portal
2. Navigate to the page where you want to add the tour:
   • Overview page
   • Meeting Spaces section
3. Insert the virtual tour link in a prominent location:
   • Top of the Overview page
   • Bottom of the Overview page under Hotel Details
   • Under specific meeting space, room, or promotion tiles
4. Use clear, action-oriented link text that indicates interactivity:
   • "Take a Virtual Tour"
   • "Explore the Ballroom"
   • "View Our Property"

Your tour should appear on your website shortly after saving your changes.

Tour Configuration Best Practices

When creating tours for your Sonesta website using Pro tier, apply these settings to ensure a clean, professional viewing experience:

Setting	Recommended Status
Menus	Hidden
Property Info Card	Disabled
Digital Business Card	Disabled

Placement Tips

For the best user experience on your Sonesta website:

• Use popup modals whenever possible to keep visitors on your website and ensure faster load times
• Avoid opening tours in new tabs or embedding them directly on the page, as these methods can slow down load times and disrupt engagement flow
• Use consistent call-to-action language like "Take a Virtual Tour" to clearly indicate interactivity and set visitor expectations
• Match content to the page context: Choose assets that align with what visitors expect to see on each specific page (overview content for Overview, meeting spaces for Events pages)

Ensure Tours Load Smoothly

Virtual tours work best when your website is configured to allow content from approved domains. To ensure your platform content loads quickly and works smoothly on your Sonesta website, share this domain allowlist with your IT team:

Key domain to include:

• https://visitme.co (required for most tour links)

This helps prevent tours from being blocked or slowed down by network filters and ensures they display as intended.

For the complete list of recommended domains, visit our domain allowlist article.

Need additional help? Contact our support team and we'll be happy to assist you.