How The Russell Used BuzzyBooth to Capture 15,000+ Guest Photos, 8,106 Contacts, and 267 Five-Star Reviews

Creating a Guest Experience People Would Remember and Share

Over three years, The Russell captured more than 15,000 guest photos, collected 8,106 guest contacts, and generated 267 five-star reviews. The hotel also created a dedicated photo booth room that guests could enjoy as part of their stay.

The experience proved valuable enough to expand beyond the original property to The Gallatin, The Russell's sister property.

For boutique hotels looking to combine memorable guest experiences with practical marketing opportunities, The Russell offers a compelling example of how experiential marketing can work alongside everyday hotel operations.

The Russell already stood out as a distinctive boutique hotel in Nashville.

The opportunity was to build on that identity by creating something guests would genuinely enjoy—an experience that could become part of their stay while also supporting the hotel's marketing goals.

The Russell wanted to encourage guest engagement, create more opportunities to generate reviews, and develop a way to stay connected with guests beyond their visit.

But the goal wasn't simply to add another amenity to the property.

It was to create an experience that felt natural to the hotel, encouraged guests to participate, and delivered value without adding significant work for the team.

A Dedicated Photo Booth Room Powered by BuzzyBooth

Rather than placing a photo booth in a hallway or an unused corner of the lobby, The Russell created a dedicated photo booth room featuring BuzzyBooth.

That decision helped make the photo booth an intentional part of the guest experience.

Guests could step into the room, take photos, experiment with fun filters, and instantly receive their content by text or email. The branded photos gave guests something personalized to enjoy and potentially share with friends and family.

The interaction also created opportunities for The Russell to:

• Capture guest contact information
• Encourage guests to share branded content
• Invite guests to leave reviews
• Add an engaging touchpoint to the overall stay

The process was designed to be simple for hotel staff. Once BuzzyBooth was turned on, guests could use the experience on their own with minimal team involvement.

This combination of a memorable guest-facing experience and a straightforward operating process helped BuzzyBooth fit into the hotel's environment without requiring staff to manage every interaction.

Captured More Than 15,000 Guest Photos

Over three years, The Russell captured more than 15,000 guest photos through BuzzyBooth.

Each photo represented an opportunity to give guests a personalized experience and create branded content they could receive and potentially share.

For boutique hotels, these interactions can help make a stay more memorable while extending the property's brand beyond the physical guest experience.

The value isn't just the photo itself. It's the opportunity to create an enjoyable moment that guests associate with their stay.

Collected 8,106 Guest Contacts

BuzzyBooth helped The Russell collect 8,106 guest contacts.

For hotels, a customer contact database can create opportunities to maintain relationships beyond checkout. With appropriate consent and in accordance with applicable marketing requirements, those contacts may support future guest communications, promotions, and other relevant marketing initiatives.

Rather than relying entirely on reaching potential guests through third-party platforms, a permissioned contact database gives a hotel another potential channel for communicating with its audience.

The Russell's contact collection results demonstrate how a guest-facing experience can also support the development of a valuable marketing resource.

Generated 267 Five-Star Reviews

Online reviews play an important role in how travelers evaluate hotels, compare accommodation options, and decide where to stay.

The Russell generated 267 five-star reviews through its BuzzyBooth program.

By incorporating review requests into the guest experience, the hotel created another opportunity for guests to share feedback about their stay.

For boutique hotels competing on experience and reputation, a consistent process for inviting feedback can support ongoing online reputation management.

The goal is to make it convenient for guests to share honest feedback—not to guarantee a particular rating or require a positive review.

Created an Experience Guests Appreciated

One of the most important outcomes wasn't a dashboard metric.

Guests regularly complimented The Russell's dedicated photo booth room and enjoyed playing with the filters.

That matters because a marketing interaction works best when it also feels worthwhile to the customer.

Instead of asking guests to engage with a separate marketing campaign, The Russell gave them an experience they wanted to participate in. The resulting photos, contact collection opportunities, and review requests became part of a guest interaction that was enjoyable in its own right.

A memorable moment became a photo. The photo became shareable content. The interaction created an opportunity to collect a contact. And a positive experience created an opportunity to invite a review.

This is what makes experiential marketing especially relevant to boutique hotels: the marketing activity can be integrated into an experience that reflects the property's personality.

The Results Led to Expansion: Bringing BuzzyBooth to The Gallatin

The Russell's experience didn't stop at the original property.

After using BuzzyBooth at The Russell, the team expanded the program to The Gallatin, its sister property.

This is an important part of the story because it shows how the guest-engagement approach could be extended to another hotel.

Each property can have its own identity and guest experience, while the broader approach—creating an engaging interaction that supports content creation, contact collection, and review requests—can be applied across locations.

For hotel groups and operators with multiple properties, this offers a useful lesson: when a guest experience fits the brand and works operationally, it may have potential beyond a single location.

The expansion to The Gallatin reinforces the value The Russell saw in bringing BuzzyBooth into its guest experience.

What Other Boutique Hotels Can Learn From The Russell

The Russell's experience offers several lessons for hotels looking to improve guest engagement and make more of their marketing opportunities.

Create an experience, not just an amenity. A dedicated photo booth room gave guests a reason to participate and made the experience feel intentional.

Make participation easy. Guests could take photos and receive their content by text or email without requiring extensive staff assistance.

Connect guest engagement with marketing opportunities. An interactive experience can create opportunities to collect contacts, encourage sharing, and invite reviews.

Build a resource for future marketing. Customer contacts collected with appropriate consent can support relevant communications after checkout.

Look for opportunities to expand. The Russell brought BuzzyBooth to The Gallatin, showing how a guest-engagement approach can extend to a sister property.

For boutique hotels, the broader opportunity is to create experiences that guests enjoy while also supporting the hotel's longer-term engagement and marketing goals.

Why Boutique Hotels Use BuzzyBooth

The testimonial highlights three benefits that matter to hospitality teams: a guest-facing experience, opportunities to support marketing goals, and minimal staff involvement.

Rather than adding a complicated new process, BuzzyBooth gave The Russell a way to connect guest engagement with contact collection, content sharing, and review requests.

BuzzyBooth helps hotels and other hospitality businesses turn interactive guest experiences into opportunities for branded media creation, customer contact collection, and review capture.

For boutique hotels, these capabilities can support a guest experience that feels engaging and memorable while creating additional marketing opportunities beyond the initial visit.

The Russell's three-year results—15,000+ guest photos, 8,106 guest contacts, and 267 five-star reviews—illustrate how those objectives can work together. The expansion to The Gallatin further demonstrates how the approach can be extended to another property.