Photos of a place

Place cards come to life when you add great imagery. When editing a Place card, select Photos to choose pictures from four different sources:

• This place: community photos shared by other Bienvue hosts for the exact same location, credited on every screen.
• Your photos: images from your own private library that remain exclusively yours.
• Open photos: free, high-quality images from Wikimedia Commons and Openverse that display required attribution and licensing information automatically.
• Google: up to 3 official Google Maps photos of the location, available if your organization connects its own Google Maps key.

The first photo you select fills the TV screen as the main image, and you can drag items to change their order.

Sharing a photo of a place

When you upload an image under This place using Add a photo of this place, that picture becomes available to other hosts recommending the same spot, with your name credited. Please upload only original pictures you took yourself, ensuring that nobody recognizable appears in the frame and that private spaces are not visible. You will be asked to confirm this agreement before uploading. You can select Stop sharing on your uploaded images at any time, or click Report if you notice a shared photo that seems inappropriate.

Photos added to custom cards that are not connected to a mapped place always remain private to that card.

Google's photos

Google photos appear after your own images, loading on demand whenever a guest opens the card, and are never stored on Bienvue servers. They require your organization's own Google Maps key because Google bills usage directly to you. Google provides the first 1,000 photo requests each month for free, and charges roughly $7 per 1,000 loads after that. An owner or admin can set this up under Organization settings in the Google photos section, which guides you through each Google Cloud step:

1. Create a Google Cloud billing account using your credit card.
2. Create a new Google Cloud project for Bienvue and connect it to your billing account.
3. Enable the Places API (New) on your project.
4. Create an API key. Under API restrictions, choose only Places API (New), and leave application restrictions set to None.
5. As an optional safety measure, configure a budget alert so Google alerts you by email if usage increases.

Once you paste your key and save, Bienvue verifies it with Google and tracks an estimate of monthly photo requests in your dashboard, though Google's billing records remain official.

If it doesn't work

• "Google doesn't recognize that key": copy the key again from the Credentials page in your Google Cloud console.
• "Places API (New) isn't turned on": enable the Places API (New) in Google Cloud, wait a minute, and try saving again.
• "This key's project has no billing account": attach an active billing account to your project in Google Cloud.
• "This key's restrictions block us": make sure API restrictions allow Places API (New), and set application restrictions to None.
• No Google photos to show: this card is not linked to a Google Maps location yet. Add the location through Find places nearby to create the link.
• "One of the chosen photos can't be added anymore": the image's licensing terms or source file were updated. Remove the image and save your card.