You can use free travel photos commercially when their licence allows it, and the big free libraries' licences do: Pexels and Unsplash photos may go into adverts without payment or credit. Creative Commons BY photos may too, with a credit. What no free licence gives you is a person's endorsement, the right to a protected landmark or logo, or a photo copied from a search result or a competitor.
The rest is detail, and the detail is where travel marketing gets caught. This is a practical guide, not legal advice: where the stakes are high, read the licence itself and ask a lawyer.
What do the free licences actually allow?
The licences differ on three things: whether the photo may go into an advert, whether you must credit it, and what you may not do with it.
| Source | Use in an advert | Credit | What the licence forbids or warns about |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pexels (licence) | Yes: its own page lists ads, banners and campaigns | Not required, appreciated | Showing identifiable people in a bad light; implying people or brands in the photo endorse you; selling unaltered copies; using a photo in your trade mark or business name |
| Unsplash (licence) | Yes, commercial and non-commercial | Not required, appreciated | Selling a photo without significant modification; compiling photos to replicate a similar or competing service |
| Pixabay (Content Licence) | Free to use and adapt; read the full licence for adverts | Not required | Selling or distributing content on its own; commercial use of content showing recognisable brands; misleading or deceptive use; content in a trade mark |
| Creative Commons BY (4.0 deed) | Yes, "even commercially" | Required: credit, a link to the licence, and a note if you changed it | You may not add terms that restrict others; publicity, privacy and moral rights may still limit use |
| Creative Commons with NC | No: NC means non-commercial | Required | An advert is commercial use |
| Public domain | Yes | Not required | Copyright has ended or been waived; other rights in the subject may remain |
| Your own photos | Yes | Your choice | Releases from the people in them (see below) |
Two terms catch people out. Royalty-free is not free: it means you pay once rather than per use. Editorial use only means news and commentary, not adverts, whatever the price.
Do you have to credit the photographer?
For Pexels, Unsplash and Pixabay, no, though Pexels and Unsplash both say a credit is appreciated. For Creative Commons BY, yes, and the deed asks for three things: appropriate credit, a link to the licence, and an indication of changes. Creative Commons' own guidance sums up a good credit as TASL: Title, Author, Source, Licence.
On a flyer, that becomes one small line at the photo's edge or the foot of the page:
Photo: "Temple garden in autumn" by A. Photographer, CC BY 4.0, cropped.
On a social post, the same line can go in the caption, with the source link there too. If you added your headline and price over the photo, "cropped, text added" covers the change.
Keep the credit with the photo from the moment you download it: who took it, where it came from, which licence, and the date. You will not remember six months later, and the person asking may be the photographer.
People in the photo: releases and endorsement
A photo licence covers the photographer's copyright. It does not make the person in the picture your spokesperson. Pexels' licence says so directly: do not imply that people or brands in the photo endorse your product, and do not show identifiable people in a bad light. The Creative Commons deed warns that publicity and privacy rights may limit how you use a photo.
For travel marketing that means:
- A stock couple is not "our happy clients". Captioning a library photo as your clients, or attaching a review to a stranger's face, implies something that is not true.
- Get written permission for your own photos of real people. That covers guides, staff and clients. A signed model release says what you may use the photo for and for how long.
- A client's holiday photo sent on WhatsApp is not yours to post. It belongs to whoever took it. Ask, in writing, before it goes into an advert.
- Children: get a parent's or guardian's written permission, or leave them out of adverts.
- Private places need their owner's permission. A resort's interior, a private villa or a restaurant's dining room is someone's property, and often someone's brand.
Landmarks and logos
Being in public view does not always make a building free to use in an advert.
- Some buildings are still protected works. The Atomium's own copyright page says the building is protected by copyright, that permission is needed for commercial and non-profit uses alike, and that its image or name cannot be used in a logo, brand or company name.
- Logos are trade marks. An airline's livery on a tail fin or a hotel chain's sign is someone else's brand. Pixabay's licence bars commercial use of recognisable brands, and Pexels' bars implying endorsement. Crop them out, or use a photo without them.
If an advert's whole point is one landmark, check that landmark's own website before you build the campaign around it.
What never to do
- Copy a photo from search results. A search engine shows other people's photos; a result tells you nothing about the licence.
- Use a competitor's photos, or a hotel's photos from its website, without permission. Some hotels publish media kits for their partners with terms of use; use those, on those terms.
- Use a photo of somewhere else. A beach from another island under your island's name is a misleading advert, whatever the licence says (travel advertising price rules covers misleading claims more widely).
- Strip a credit or watermark. Removing one is a sign you knew the photo was not free.
- Assume "free" today means free forever. A licence can have an end date. Note it.
A worked example: five photos for one flyer
Say you are making a flyer for an autumn trip to Kyoto, and you have five candidates.
| Photo | Can it go on the flyer? | Credit? | Watch for |
|---|---|---|---|
| A temple garden your local guide took | Only with the guide's written permission: the guide owns it | As you agree | Agree the credit and how long you may use it |
| A Pexels photo of a temple at dusk | Yes | Not required | Check that no recognisable person is the focus and no sign is legible |
| A CC BY 4.0 photo from a public archive | Yes | Yes: title, author, source, licence, "cropped, text added" | The credit line must survive every resize |
| A photo from another agency's Kyoto page | No | Ask them, or leave it | |
| A free-library photo of a couple in kimono | Yes, for the scene | Not required | Never caption it as your clients |
The flyer uses the Pexels photo as the hero and the CC BY photo inside, with one credit line under it. If the guide says yes in writing, their photo can replace the archive one, with whatever credit you agreed. What makes a travel flyer sell covers choosing the hero photo; social media image sizes for travel covers how large each photo needs to be.
How Studio sources and credits photos
In iTravel Studio, the template library's own photos were chosen by hand from Pexels, and each is kept with its photographer's name and its Pexels page. When you pick a destination for a template, Studio fetches photos of that place from Pexels once, and only photos whose own description names the place stand in for it, each kept with its photographer and page.
Your own photos live in the account's picture library, which records for each picture whose it is (your own, a supplier's, stock with its licence, or not known), its credit, its licence and the date that licence ends. Studio's photo picker offers only pictures approved for public use whose licence has not ended. A photo you upload in Studio is recorded as your own, so upload only what is yours or what you hold a licence for.
Studio does not print a credit on your design for you. Where a licence asks for one, add it as a line of text. Studio's own stickers, flags and icons come from sets under the MIT licence, and its fonts are under the SIL Open Font License. Studio is in early access; the travel flyer maker page and the travel agency brand kit post describe the rest, and Instagram post ideas put the photos to work.
Before a photo goes into an advert: a checklist
- [ ] You know where the photo came from, and you have the licence page or the permission in writing.
- [ ] The licence allows commercial use (no NC, no "editorial use only").
- [ ] Where the licence asks for a credit, the credit line is on the design or in the caption: title, author, source, licence, changes.
- [ ] No identifiable person is shown as your client, your reviewer or endorsing you, unless they signed a release saying so.
- [ ] Children, private interiors and other people's property have written permission, or are out of the picture.
- [ ] No airline, hotel-chain or other brand logo is the focus.
- [ ] A landmark that is protected has its owner's or operator's permission.
- [ ] The photo shows the place the advert sells.
- [ ] The licence's end date, if it has one, is recorded with the photo.
- [ ] Nothing came from a search result or a competitor's site.
