Hotels Want You to Star in Your Own Vacation

— -- In just a few short years, the vacation photo has evolved dramatically. And now, hotels are offering guests ways to make capturing the vacation easier.

Kimpton hotels now have selfie sticks available, complimentary, for rent at the front desks. And Marriott hotels in the Caribbean and Latin America now offer free GoPro Hero4 cameras to guests free of charge.

“We live in a digital and social age. Through this program at Marriott Hotels, we’re giving guests a fun way to tell their own travel story using the versatile and memory making GoPro technology and immediately share their content with friends and family,” said Craig S. Smith, President of the Caribbean and Latin America at Marriott International.

Because you see, when a vacation -- or a hotel –- is shared on social media, that’s free attention to the hotel.

Both Kimpton and Marriott have suggested hashtags for your photos like #GoPro, #travelbrilliantly and #AdoreThySelfie. Guests who use those hashtags are entered into contests for prizes from the hotels.

The selfie sticks and GoPros are just the latest iteration of hotels getting wise to this form of “advertising.”

The Four Seasons Resort in Maui employed a man names Smiles –- for real –- to take guests photos with their smartphones. He’ll get that honeymoon sunset photo just perfect.

Bruvion Travel, a high-end luxury travel company, created the “selfie-less” vacation package that comes with a social media assistant who is on call 24/7, meaning he or she not only takes (and edits) all your photos, but takes charge of your social media accounts for the duration of the trip so you don’t even have to do your own bragging.