Want to start creating hotel content for TikTokGO without draining your wallet? You don’t need a luxury suite or five-night stay to get footage that converts. Whether you’re just getting started or trying to stretch your travel budget, we’re breaking down the smart, creative ways to capture high-quality hotel visuals, without overspending.

If you’re still figuring out how the TikTokGO program works, make sure to check out our complete guide here before diving in.

Use Public Access Hotels and Open-Air Resorts

If you’ve ever wandered through Waikiki or certain areas in Hawaii, you’ve probably noticed how many hotels are open-air resorts. These properties are designed so that anyone can walk through parts of the lobby, restaurants, courtyards, and beachfront areas, even if they’re not staying overnight.

These public-access hotels are a goldmine for creators trying to capture TikTokGO hotel content on a budget. You can film aesthetic corners, lobby vibes, outdoor hallways, on-site shops, restaurants, and even beach views without needing to book a room. It’s one of the easiest ways to get high-quality footage while still playing by the rules.

Using these kinds of properties gives you flexibility to save money for places that do require a night’s stay, while still building your hotel video portfolio for TikTokGO. If you’re wondering how to get free hotel footage, this is one of the best places to start, especially for beginners.

Use Work Travel to Capture Hotel Footage (If Your Employer Covers the Stay)

If your job sends you on business trips, take advantage of it. That hotel room is basically free content. As long as it doesn’t go against company policy, use your downtime to film the room, amenities, lobby areas, and the overall vibe of the property.

Business hotels are often clean, quiet, and super easy to film in. And since your employer is covering the stay, it’s one of the cheapest ways to gather high-quality TikTokGO hotel footage without spending a dime out of pocket. Total win-win.

Just make sure to:

• Respect other guests
  
  
• Avoid filming any sensitive or private work materials
  
  
• Keep filming to public areas or your own room
  

Honestly, this is the holy grail of budget hacks: someone else is paying you to be there, and you’re getting content you can repurpose for your own channel. If you have the chance to film during work trips, don’t skip it. You’ll wish you had later.

Use Points From Hotel Rewards Programs

This is one of the best hotel content hacks, because those points? They’re basically a creative goldmine. If you’ve stayed with any major chain like Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt, or IHG, chances are you’ve got some points ready to be redeemed.

You can:

• Use points for a free night
  
  
• Stack points + cash for cheaper stays
  
  
• Book lower-tier hotels for high-value redemptions
  
  
• Take advantage of 5th-night-free promos
  
  
• Tap into travel credit card bonuses for extra stays
  
  

We’re Globalist with Hyatt and Platinum Elite with IHG, and we’ve used our points to snag free nights, suite upgrades, and even point-based gifts. It’s one of our favorite ways to score stays that give us beautiful properties to film, for free.

Even a single reward night can fuel 10+ TikTokGO videos: room tours, lobby shots, pool clips, restaurant footage, and B-roll for months.

If you’re already loyal to a hotel brand, don’t let your points sit there. Turn them into high-converting video content and start earning affiliate income from stays you didn’t even pay for, because who doesn’t like to travel for free?

Buy Lunch or Dinner at the Hotel

If you want to access a hotel’s vibe without booking a room, grabbing a meal on-site is one of the easiest (and most fun) workarounds. We actually do this a lot because 1) we love to eat, and 2) some hotel restaurants are next-level when it comes to food, views, and vibes.

One of our favorite examples: we visited the Mandapa, a Ritz-Carlton Reserve in Ubud, Bali Indonesia. We made a lunch reservation, got access to the entire property, and filmed everything from the lush walkways to the scenic riverfront and the epic rice field on the property. 

We couldn’t shoot inside the rooms, but almost every public area was fair game. That property runs about $1,000 USD per night, but our lunch came in around $150–$200 total, and the content we captured? Worth every cent.

Lunch is usually the better option because:

• It’s more budget-friendly than dinner
  
  
• Daylight makes your footage 10x better
  
  
• Restaurants are usually less crowded
  
  
• You can film your food, drinks, and the surroundings without feeling rushed
  
  

This trick gets you authentic, on-property footage, without the price tag of an overnight stay.

Book a Cheap Night When Prices Drop (or Use Your Own Affiliate Link)

Most hotels have “soft nights” where rates dip, this usually happens midweek. From our experience traveling full-time the past five years, Tuesday to Thursday tends to be the sweet spot: lower prices, fewer people, and easier filming.

Booking just one low-demand night can cost half the weekend rate, and it’s more than enough time to:

• Film your room
  
  
• Capture pools, spas, or amenities
  
  
• Get sunrise or sunset exteriors
  
  
• Shoot B-roll for multiple TikTokGO videos and your personal library.
  
  

One affordable stay can give you a full month’s worth of content, if you go in with a solid shot list. Make the most of your time, knock out a variety of angles, and walk away with high-converting hotel footage.

Pro tip: If you have affiliate links through Booking.com or another platform, book your own stay through your link (just don’t disclose this publicly to avoid terms violations). It won’t make you rich, but you’ll earn a small commission back on content you were going to create anyway.

Contact the Hotel’s Marketing Manager

If you’re confident in your filming skills, one of the best ways to get access is by asking the hotel directly, but you have to reach the right person. That’s almost never the front desk. You’ll want to speak to the Marketing Manager or General Manager, they’re the ones who can green-light content creators.

When reaching out, ask if they have a media-ready room available. These are rooms that are already cleaned, styled, and prepped specifically for press, photography, or influencer walkthroughs.

A simple pitch could be:

“I’m creating hotel content for the TikTokGO program and would love a quick walkthrough to highlight your property.”

A lot of marketing managers actually love exposure, especially when it’s free. If your content aligns with their brand, they’ll often allow you access to film areas like:

• the lobby
  
  
• pool area
  
  
• restaurants
  
  
• public spaces
  
  

If you already have travel content on your page or even better, a blog or Instagram following, include that. It builds trust and makes your request feel more professional. These small wins add up fast, and you never know what doors will open from one “yes.”

Use Your Network Or Ask Someone Who Works There

If you or someone you know works at a hotel (or has a friend or family member who does), that connection can be a major win. Ask them if they’d be willing to walk the property with you and help you capture a few shots.

But here’s the big thing: make sure they’re actually allowed to do this. You don’t want to put anyone’s job at risk. Always ask them to double-check with management before filming anything on property, even in public spaces.

If you get the green light, you can usually capture:

• the lobby
  
  
• hallways
  
  
• courtyard or outdoor areas
  
  
• pool deck
  
  
• restaurant (public side only)
  
  

Just be respectful, work quickly, and never film in employee-only spaces. A little courtesy goes a long way when it comes to maintaining access, and that one connection could help you build a whole video library.

Start Building Your TikTokGO Hotel Footage Library Today

With these 7 tips you can definitely get great photos and videos of some stunning properties, without blowing your budget. And honestly, who doesn’t love that?

But here’s the part that most creators forget: you don’t need a luxury stay or a five-night vacation to start building a solid TikTokGO hotel-footage library. You just need strategy, confidence, and consistency. Every hotel you visit, every work trip you take, every lobby you walk through… it all becomes usable content.

Getting the video is a journey and think of it like that. You are learning how to shoot video in different lighting + environments and gaining a style so your content feels more “you”. With this you will slowly build trust with your audience because you are building a brand too.

And don’t forget that you are building a library of video footage. Think Shutterstock, iStock and Pixabay, but with no fees, and it’s your own footage, allowing you to use it however you want, whether for personal or commercial use.

With this library you will be able to use footage for TikTokGO campaigns like Booking.com and Viator, as well as off-platform content for Pinterest and Instagram. The bigger your library gets, the more flexibility you have to choose tasks based on content you already have.

We’ve even used two-year-old footage that never made it to our personal channels, and it ended up being the backbone of a successful campaign. We spent around $300 on the stay and dinner, and made over $4,000 from the video content we shot there.

You never know what footage will become valuable later and you don’t need the “perfect trip” to make great videos. You just need to start capturing aesthetic clips wherever you are.

Over time, you’ll have a folder full of hotels, lobbies, pools, hallways, views, and restaurants ready to plug into your next TikTokGO task. Your library becomes your secret weapon, and it grows faster than you think. Just be intentional and you’ll succeed.