Does a Virtual Tour Actually Increase Footfall?
Not a promise. A look at what actually happened after real tours went live.
Footfall and Conversion · 4 August 2026 · 2 min read
Written by the Biztour team - Google Trusted Photographers since 2013.
It's a fair question, and the honest answer is: a virtual tour doesn't increase footfall by existing. What it does is remove the uncertainty that stops someone who was already interested from following through, and it does that measurably, if you look at what people actually do once the tour is live rather than what marketing claims about it.
We can't promise a number for your business, because footfall depends on far more than one piece of content. What we can show is what actually happened at a venue we can name, with a tour we can point to.
The Roundhouse: six years of the same tour
The Roundhouse in Camden is one of London's best known music and event venues, and its enhanced Google virtual tour has been live for over six years. In that time it has averaged 1 minute 13 seconds of engagement per session, across thousands of unique and repeat users.
A minute and thirteen seconds doesn't sound dramatic until you compare it to how long anyone actually looks at a normal photo on a listing: a few seconds, if that. That's the gap a tour closes - not by being flashier, but by giving someone a reason to keep looking instead of moving on to the next search result.
Why dwell time is the number that matters
Footfall itself is hard to attribute to any single piece of marketing. Dwell time on your Google Business Profile is not: it's a direct, measurable sign that someone was engaged enough to keep exploring rather than bouncing straight back to the search results. The more time someone spends with your business before they've even called, the more decided they already are by the time they do.
That's the mechanism, not a promise: a tour turns a passive scroll into an active look around, and an active look around is what precedes a booking, a viewing or a visit, whether that's a wedding enquiry, a venue hire or a walk-in customer.
What this means for a smaller business
The Roundhouse is a large venue with a lot to show, which is partly why its tour performs the way it does. A smaller business with fewer scenes to explore will see shorter sessions, and that's fine: the mechanism is the same even if the numbers are smaller. What matters is giving people something to engage with beyond a handful of static photos.
Questions people ask
How do I see engagement data for my own tour?
Enhanced tours can report on hotspot interactions and time spent, and Google Business Profile itself reports photo and tour views in its own Insights panel. Ask us for this if it's not already part of your reporting.
Does a tour work for a business with no single "wow" space?
Yes. Even a straightforward office, clinic or shop benefits from the same mechanism: people spend longer with your listing, which precedes a decision, whether or not any one scene is dramatic.
Enhanced virtual tours for every kind of business
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