360° virtual tour on Google Maps · Lokal360

360° virtual tours on Google Maps. How it works step by step

Most small businesses have only a few phone photos on their Google listing, yet a customer wants to see what the inside really looks like before they visit. This is where 360° virtual tours, also called 3D tours, come in. It is an official Google Business Profile feature, available since 2010 and heavily refreshed in 2024. Anyone who finds you on Google Maps can step into your venue in Street View mode and move through the rooms, rotating the view a full 360 degrees, up and down. It is not a decoration, a high-quality tour genuinely helps you rank higher in maps. The cost of a virtual tour is a one-time expense, and you will find the price list for both options (Express 24h and Premium) in the section above.

Google virtual tours show up in three places at once: in the Google search results (by the company name), in the Google Maps app (on phone and on desktop) and in Street View (here the tour shows most strongly, because Google presents interiors as a natural extension of Street View from the street).

Step by step, how a tour gets onto Google Maps

1. Session at the venue, 30-90 minutes, a Matterport Axis camera on a tripod. Each point is one 360° panorama.
2. HDR post-production, 24-48 hours: I combine several different brightness levels of one shot, fix the lighting, remove staff from the frame if the session was during opening hours.
3. Stitching the panoramas into a tour and adding the points the customer moves between rooms with.
4. Publishing in Google Maps via Street View Studio, straight onto the customer's listing (Google does not have to verify it, because a certified photographer does it).
5. Google shows the tour, 24-48 hours, during this time the tour gradually appears in all Google places.
6. The tour works forever, no monthly fees, no subscription. I do not charge any "monthly tour hosting", only dishonest companies bill that kind of fee.

What Google rewards in virtual tours

Google has named the things that decide whether your 360° tour jumps into the top three in maps: listing completeness (whether the tour shows all the important places in the venue), panorama sharpness (the higher the better, Premium panoramas are sharper), a correctly connected tour (the right listing, the blue line, quality that passes moderation) and freshness (a tour refreshed every year or two does better than an old one from 2020).

In practice most small businesses neglect at least several of these things. This is a real opportunity for any business that orders a tour from an experienced provider. Igor Bily, founder of Lokal360, has over 150 360° tours on Google Maps and 31 reviews 5.0 to his name.

360° virtual tours for Poland's main cities

Lokal360 serves the whole country, but in the main cities I have dedicated pages with local projects and specifics:

• Virtual tour Warsaw, YOI Ramen Powisle, MOXO Wola
• Virtual tour Krakow, Volver Kazimierz, Mr Black, Black Gallery Pub
• Virtual tour Wroclaw, Masala (25,000 views in 2 months)
• Virtual tour Poznan
• Virtual tour Gdansk
• Virtual tour Lodz
• Virtual tour Katowice
• Virtual tour Lublin

If you live in a smaller town, I serve you too, travel across Poland is included in the package price. Leave your number in the form below, I will call back with a concrete quote for your location.

City plus industry, 18 dedicated pages

For the most common city plus industry combinations we built separate pages with local examples, a list of districts, pricing and answers to questions. A customer searching for e.g. "360 tour for a restaurant in Warsaw" lands straight on a page matched to their situation.

Matterport or Google Street View? What to choose for a 360° tour

For a local business that wants more customers from Google, the better choice is a tour in Google Street View, not Matterport. I publish a Street View tour straight onto your Google Maps listing, right where the customer is looking for you anyway, you pay once and the tour stays forever. Matterport is a separate 3D model with measurements and a view of the whole interior like a model from above, it works on a monthly fee and you embed it on your own site. It does not show up on its own in Google Maps, which is why it works mainly for real estate, on construction sites and for documenting large spaces.

In the shortest terms: Street View shows you where the customer is already looking, while a customer still has to be brought to Matterport. You can have both (for example a premium real estate office), but for an ordinary restaurant, salon or clinic the Street View tour alone pays off faster and without a fixed monthly fee.

The full comparison with a table and a 5-year cost calculation: Matterport or Google Street View, what to choose in 2026. Do you specifically need a Matterport 3D model for real estate or documentation? See the 3D scanning service. You will also find the meaning of both in the 360° tour glossary.