S2E2: Licensing Your Art for Hotels

In this episode, I, Patricia Vargas, will share with you the exciting world of licensing your art for hotels. First, we'll cover the basics of what licensing is and how it works when you're licensing for hotels, including who to work with. I'll also share a bit of my personal experience of breaking into this niche market

00:14 Understanding art licensing
01:45 Licensing Art for Hotels
03:48 How art consultants can help
06:12 Example of licensing for a hotel
06:56 Benefits of licensing over selling physical prints
08:22 Conclusion and next steps

• Read the transcript below

• Start your hotel licensing journey with the How to License Your Art to Hotels guide

• Come say "hi!" on Threads @thequietlythrivingartist

Transcript

[00:00:00] Hello, welcome to the Quietly Thriving Artist. I'm your host, Patricia Vargas, and today we're gonna talk about licensing and, in particular, licensing your art for hotels. So let's dive right in. But before we get into the “hotel” part of licensing, I just wanna go over what licensing is in general, for those of you who don't know what licensing is.

[00:00:25] So licensing is when you give another company or person the legal right to use your art for commercial purposes in exchange for a fee. So in exchange for money. And once you give them that legal permission. You will then hand over your high-resolution file of your artwork to the company that you're licensing it to.

[00:00:49] So this could be a high-quality JPEG or PDF or whatever format they need for their end use. For example, one of the most common forms of licensing is for retail products. So let's say that Target wants to license your artwork to make some really cute mugs. So you would both sign a contract agreeing to the terms of the project, and let's say that those terms are that they're gonna use one artwork and they're gonna make 10,000 mugs for all of their retail stores.

[00:01:20] And then they'll pay you a certain percentage of each sale. And this is also called a royalty. And so your contract would cover all of those legal details, and saying that you give them legal permission to use your artwork for this format. And then once you're done, you then hand over the file of your artwork and then they make the mugs, and eventually you get your first royalty checks.

[00:01:45] So that's an example of one of the most common forms of licensing, but one of the lesser-known paths is licensing for hotels and other similar spaces like corporate buildings, restaurants, cruise ships, and more. And I kind of just stumbled into this myself. I didn't know– when I was starting my business, I didn't know that this was even an option for artists.

[00:02:11] I had never seen anybody really talk about it. I had never even thought about it myself, like I'd never wondered where hotels got art from, had never even crossed my mind. And the way that I found out about it was that the Omni Frisco, which is a hotel/training camp in Texas for the NFL's Dallas Cowboys, reached out about a commission.

[00:02:35] So this wasn't a licensing opportunity, but it was my first introduction into getting my art into hotels. And they commissioned me to do a digital painting that which I then had printed and sent to them directly. And I remember thinking just how awesome it was that I got this opportunity. 'Cause again, I had never thought about this before.

[00:02:58] And then not long after that, it was like some sort of, you know, like the floodgates opened and I got my first licensing project for a hotel in California. And I was like, “Okay, hold up. You're telling me not only can I sell artwork to them and do custom work for them, but I can also license my art to them.”

[00:03:18] Like that is seriously so cool, and it blew my mind. And so if this is your first time hearing about it, maybe you're having a similar reaction. So yes, you can license your art for hotels, restaurants, healthcare, cruise ships, bars, and like multi-family spaces, corporate offices, and so much more. And it works a little bit similar to licensing your art for retail products, in which you have to give them the legal permission to use your artwork.

[00:03:48] So before I dive into that a little bit more, I'm gonna tell you who it is exactly that you are going to be working with, because it's really natural to think that, okay, if I want to get my into hotels, then I probably need to go into a hotel that I want my artwork in and ask to see their manager or something and have my portfolio ready to go and a pitch ready to present.

[00:04:12] But that is not how this works, because hotels themselves aren't the ones actually looking for the artwork. They hire other professionals called art consultants or sometimes called art advisors. And the job of an art consultant is to find artwork that best fits the client's requirements. So they're going to find artwork that best fits their wall space, that's best gonna fit the overall theme or decor.

[00:04:44] And if they have any other kind of requirements, maybe they want our work that is only from the local area, or something like that. And so it's the consultant's job to be well connected with the artist community and keep an eye out and an ear to the ground and see what's new and happening. I like to think of art consultants as like the matchmakers between the artist and the hotel.

[00:05:11] They're always searching for people, and they're always searching for the best artwork for that project. Sometimes they purchase originals, like I mentioned. Sometimes they commission artworks. They actually really love commissioning artworks, and sometimes they purchase prints directly from the artist, but sometimes they choose to license the artwork instead.

[00:05:34] They do this because it's more cost-effective for them to do so, especially if it's a really high-volume project. Like if they have a hotel that has a thousand rooms that they need to fill, then they most likely will license that artwork. And another reason why they like to license it is because they get to oversee the production of the prints, and they get to decide how they wanna print it.

[00:05:57] So if they want it on paper, on canvas, or on some sort of other material, they have the flexibility to do that with a licensed artwork. So these are the people that you're gonna want to work with if you want to get your art into hotels. So let's quickly go over how this works with an example. So let's say that an art consultant has a client who owns a five star hotel in The Bahamas and they're remodeling a hundred of their guest suites, and the consultant thinks that your work would be a really good fit and wants to license it from you for this project.

[00:06:34] So you would both agree on a price and sign an agreement with you giving them permission to use your artwork. For this purpose and only for this purpose. And then once you get paid, you would then hand over the high-resolution file of your artwork, and that's it. That's the gist of the process. It's fairly simple.

[00:06:56] A lot of the work comes from communicating with the art consultant back and forth, because they’ll often have questions about your art in terms of like size and pricing, as I mentioned before, and availability. And because this process is so simple, you don't have to worry about printing, packaging, or shipping those 100 art prints.

[00:07:18] And it's one of the reasons why I absolutely love licensing so much, because the art consultants are gonna handle all of those logistics on their end. And let me tell you, as someone that has had to ship a large volume of artworks for a corporate client a couple of times, I can tell you that it's really stressful to do so, not only to get all of those artworks out on time, but making sure that they arrive safely.

[00:07:44] Because I've definitely had some that did not make it there safely and arrive damaged, and then we had to do them all over again and, you know, long story short, I lost several nights of sleep over this, trying to figure out a solution for this particular situation that I was in. Anyways, it was really stressful, even though it paid well, and I would much prefer to do licensing than having to send physical prints because licensing removes you from having to do all of that stuff.

[00:08:15] And so at the end of the day, you still get your art into really cool spaces without the hassle of production. Alright, so if you want to learn more about how to license your art to hotels, I go over this in detail inside my guide, How to License Your Art to Hotels. And there's a link in the show notes if you are interested.

[00:08:37] And then next week we're gonna talk about why working with our consultants is a good fit for introverted artists. So you're gonna wanna stick around for that, and that comes out next week. Okay, that is it for me. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure you subscribe or share with a friend, and I will see you over in the next one.