Not by the calendar.
But when the house has changed.

Not once a period has run out. Two-year-old shots of a room that has not changed since still show the room correctly. The reason sits in the house, not in the calendar.

What does count as a reason: a renovation, new rooms, a new restaurant, a rebuilt spa area. Anything a guest sees in the picture and no longer finds that way in the house – or the other way round, finds in the house and does not see in the picture.

Then there are the cases without building work: furnishings that have since been replaced, a house aiming at a different audience, a direction the existing pictures no longer fit.

As old as the house in them still is. A picture does not age by itself, it ages with what can be seen in it.

What makes a picture look old is therefore usually inside the picture: furnishings that no longer exist that way, an area now used differently. As long as the room looks the way it does in the shot, the shot is current.

The rule of thumb of reshooting every two or three years is convenient, but it misses at both ends: houses that have changed nothing pay without a reason. Houses that have changed a lot wait too long.

Two things, and the second is the more expensive one. The first: a guest books on the strength of a picture and finds something else. The difference shows on arrival.

The second: a renovation nobody sees. The money is in the house, but the decision is made before that – on the website, in the booking portal, on Google. If the old room is shown there, the rebuild is missing at exactly the point where it should be working.

And the portals do not follow by themselves. Every channel holds its own set of pictures; the old ones stay there until they are replaced. What may be used where is set out under who may advertise with your pictures.

That is a case of its own. A house whose surroundings sell in summer and whose pictures are from November does not have a currency problem. The rooms are right, the moment is not.

Which season belongs to which house, and when two dates are worth it, is set out under which season your house shows.

Yes, and this is the trigger most easily overlooked. A house changing direction – from conference business to a weekend destination, from a stopover hotel to one for several nights – often still has the pictures of the old direction.

The rooms may be unchanged. The pictures still no longer fit, because they answer a different question: a room for one night between two appointments is shown differently from one for three days for two.

Here too nothing about the house has changed – and the pictures no longer fit all the same.

Sale and takeover are a case of their own. In houses that are up for sale, the picture stock has often not been looked after for years. And at the handover it is sometimes no longer to be found at all – files that sat on an old computer, a supplier nobody knows any more. And sometimes the pictures are there, but nobody can say what was agreed for using them.

New owners are then left with a house they cannot yet show. If a rebuild or a new direction comes with it, two reasons meet at once. It is worth checking early what pictures actually exist and what was agreed about using them.