How to Rent Out a Photo Studio by the Hour

Why Studios Need a Different Kind of Booking

A photo studio is not a person. When a photographer books your "White Hall" for three hours, the studio is busy for those three hours, but your other halls are still free, and you yourself may be free to take a call. Classic scheduling tools treat every booking as a meeting with you, so one shoot in one hall blocks your whole calendar. Studio owners end up juggling spreadsheets, DMs and deposits by bank transfer.

Meetario solves this with resource mode: each room gets its own booking page and its own independent schedule. Clients pick a start time, choose how many hours they need, pay online and receive a confirmation, all without a single message from you. This guide walks through a typical setup for a studio with three spaces: Loft, White Hall and Cyclorama. For a quick overview of the use case, see Meetario for studios.

The Plan: One Event Type per Room

In Meetario every bookable thing is an event type. For a studio, the simplest and most flexible approach is one event type per room:

Loft — natural light, 60-minute slots
White Hall — white walls and floor, 60-minute slots
Cyclorama — infinity cove, 60-minute slots

Each room then has its own link, its own opening hours, its own price and its own bookings. A shoot in the Loft never makes the Cyclorama look busy.

Step-by-Step Setup

Create the event type. Go to Event Types → New Event Type and choose the Individual booking type tile. Name it after the room, for example "Loft".
Set the slot length. Set Duration to 60 minutes. The duration is the length of one bookable slot, so 60 minutes means you rent the room by the hour. If you rent in half-hour steps, use 30 instead.
Mark it as a room. In the Scheduling section, tick This is a room or resource. This is the key switch that gives the room its own independent schedule (details below).
Let clients book several hours. In the same section, tick Clients can book several slots in a row and set Up to N slots per booking. For a studio, 6 or 8 is a good value (any number from 2 to 12 works). With 60-minute slots and a limit of 8, a client can book anywhere from 1 to 8 hours in one go.
Add a cleaning buffer. Set Buffer After to, for example, 30 minutes. This keeps half an hour free after every booking so you can reset the backdrop, move lights and clean the floor.
Set opening hours. In the Availability section, set the weekly hours for each day, for example Monday to Saturday 09:00–22:00 and Sunday 10:00–18:00. For a room these are simply its opening hours.
Turn on payment. In the Payment panel on the right, tick Paid Event, enter the Price per hour, choose the Currency and the Gateway. More on this below.
Ask what you need to know. Add custom fields such as "Number of people" or "Need lighting equipment?" so you can prepare the room before the client arrives.
Save, then repeat for White Hall and Cyclorama. Each room can have its own price, opening hours and buffer.

What "This is a room or resource" Actually Changes

Resource mode turns an event type from "a meeting with you" into "a space that can be rented". Specifically:

The room is only blocked by its own bookings. A booking in the Loft does not block the White Hall or the Cyclorama.
Several rooms can be booked at the same time. Three different photographers can shoot in your three halls simultaneously.
Room bookings never block your personal meeting types. If you also offer a "Studio tour" or "Consultation" event type for yourself, a three-hour Cyclorama rental will not hide those slots.
Your personal Google or Outlook calendar does not block rooms. Your dentist appointment will not make the Loft look unavailable.
Room bookings are not copied to your personal calendar. Your calendar is not flooded with dozens of rentals. You still get a notification for every booking by email, and in Telegram, WhatsApp, Viber or Slack if you have connected them.
The public page speaks about the place, not a person. The booking page shows "at {your company name}" instead of "with {your name}".

How Clients Book Several Hours

With multi-slot booking enabled, the booking page asks the client "How long do you need?" with options such as 1 h, 2 h, 3 h and so on, up to the limit you set. Once they choose a length, Meetario only shows start times where the whole block is free, including your buffer. A client who picks 4 hours will not be offered 19:00 if the room closes at 22:00 or if another shoot starts at 21:00.

The result is one booking, not four separate ones. The client gets one confirmation, you get one notification, and the room is blocked for the full period.

Taking Payment Up Front

First connect a payment provider: open the avatar menu and go to Workspace integrations. Meetario supports Stripe, PayPal, Square, Mollie, Adyen, Checkout.com, Mangopay, Worldpay and Hyperwallet. The money goes straight to your own account, and Meetario takes 0% commission. Paid bookings need a plan that includes payments.

The Price you enter is the price of one slot, so with 60-minute slots it is your hourly rate. When a client books several slots, the price is multiplied by the number of slots: at 40 per hour, a 3-hour booking costs 120. For more detail on pricing and buffers, read Hourly Pricing, Minimum Booking Length and Cleaning Buffers.

Sharing the Booking Pages

Each room has its own link, which you can post in your Instagram bio, send in messages or print on a QR code at the entrance. Your profile page at /booking/{your-username} lists all your public event types, so clients can compare rooms in one place. To put all three halls on your own website, follow Add a Room Booking Calendar to Your Website.

Tips

Describe each room well. Use the event type description for size, ceiling height, included equipment and house rules. Good descriptions mean fewer questions.
Use different buffers per room. A cyclorama often needs more time to repaint or clean than a loft, so give it a longer Buffer After.
Prevent surprise bookings. Set Minimum Notice (for example 12 hours) so nobody books the hall for tonight when no one is there to open it.
Limit how far ahead people book. Book Up To 60 or 90 days keeps your calendar flexible for price changes.
Test it yourself. Open the room link in a private window and walk through a 2-hour booking before you share it.

Start Renting Your Studio Online

Setting up three rooms takes about fifteen minutes. Create your free Meetario account, add your first room and share the link. If you also rent meeting rooms or desks, see How to Set Up Meeting Room Booking for Your Office or Coworking.