Destination content at scale
Production Case Study
NOUS CREATIVE x SHUTTERSTOCK STUDIOS · FOR BOOKING.COM
CLIENT
Booking.com
PROJECT
Destination Photography Japan
PRODUCTION
Shutterstock Studios UK
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER
Tom King and Noelia Lage, Shutterstock Studios UK
JAPAN PRODUCTION PARTNER
NOUS Creative
THE BRIEF
Refresh Booking.com's Japan image library at scale.
Commissioned by Shutterstock Studios, NOUS was tasked with building a nationwide destination content library across regions, cities, districts, landmarks, and travel themes.
The content was designed for platform-wide use across Booking.com, supporting destination discovery, marketing campaigns, and social media while meeting global technical, creative, and legal standards.
PROJECT SNAPSHOT
A nationwide destination content library, built region by region.
13
REGIONS
153 Images
11
CITIES
161 Images
14
DISTRICTS
136 Images
17
17
LANDMARKS
91 Images
91 Images
5
THEMES
56 Images
597
FINAL IMAGES DELIVERED
YAMANASHI REGION
Chureito Pagoda
THE CHALLENGE
THE CHALLENGE
High volume, tight timelines and a country that demands you know it well.
Access
Legal access to shoot was never guaranteed. Permits had to be secured location by location, across the country.
Weather
Japan's weather does not negotiate. Typhoons, rainy season and summer heat were built into every scheduling decision.
Variety
Maintaining visual consistency across 60+ locations while adapting to permit refusals, weather disruption and a rolling client review cycle.
ISHIKAWA REGION
Kanazawa City
THE APPROACH
A distributed production system, not a single shoot.
Rather than treating the project as a series of independent shoots, we designed a distributed production system spanning multiple regions, photographers, seasons and content categories.
We identified vantage points, seasonal festivals, cultural details and unexpected moments that elevate the work beyond coverage into something more immersive.
The production was mapped across an 8-month calendar, aligning each region with optimal seasonal conditions while building in buffers for disruption.
KAGAWA REGION
Uchinomi Festival, Shodoshima
HOW WE WORKED
01
A seasonal production calendar mapped region by region, sidestepping typhoon season, rainy season and extreme summer heat.
02
Three photographers deployed simultaneously with staggered, overlapping itineraries to maximise coverage across Japan.
03
Per-region shot planning including key vantage points, cultural moments and time-of-day strategy.
OKINAWA REGION
Zamami Island
HOW WE WORKED
04
Permits and talent releases managed across a complex range of location types including stations, heritage sites and religious buildings.
05
Real-time pivoting for weather disruption and permit refusals, with alternative locations sourced from deep local knowledge.
06
Ongoing quality control and rolling delivery aligned to client review cycles.
KUMAMOTO REGION
Mt Aso
BUILT TO ADAPT
The moments that mattered most were not in the plan.
When a typhoon disrupted the schedule in Oita, the shoot was rerouted to Nagasaki within 48 hours.
Oita was moved to a different season, permits were restructured under time pressure, and the photographer was given more flexibility to interpret the brief.
Both regions produced some of the strongest images in the final set.
TOKYO CITY
Samurai Time
BUILT TO ADAPT
BUILT TO ADAPT
Consistency at scale.
The challenge was not simply capturing different destinations. It was maintaining a coherent visual standard across an increasingly diverse content library.
Every region needed to feel distinct while remaining recognisably part of the same destination ecosystem.
Consistency was achieved through structured planning, local knowledge and continuous quality control across every region.
THE RESULT
"One of the most successful iterations of this project to date."
BOOKING.COM
The result was a nationally consistent destination image library delivered across multiple regions, categories and travel themes, with full legal compliance across all assets.
597 final assets delivered across 13 regions, 11 cities, 14 districts, 17 landmarks and 5 travel themes.
HOKKAIDO REGION
Otaru Canal
