That’s what Oyster.com rolled out today with its Oyster Shots photo-powered hotel search.

For example, users can merely click on a trending photo category such as “beaches,” select a photo for Hotel Casa Del Mar in Santa Monica, Calif., and then book a room right from the photo on Oyster.com.

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Of course, you can also enter a text query to access photo-led search results and Oyster provides auto-suggest functionality as you are typing your query to speed the process. The auto-suggest features looks like this:

So, if you start typing “Santa Monica p” then you will see auto-suggested choices such as “Santa Monica and Venice, Los Angeles +pool” or “Santa Monica and Venice, Los Angeles +Premier Room” to speed your query.

Eytan Seidman, Oyster co-founder and vice president of product, says Oyster tags each photo and leverages data about each image in its database to retrieve relevant results.

Each image contains GPS data such as latitude and longitude;  the hotel name; and the part of the hotel where the photo was taken (pool, lobby, guest room), for example.

On top of that data, Oyster then layers editorial data about the property such as whether it can be classified as a “party hotel” or a “luxury hotel,” Seidman adds.

“We have all that data across all the photos,” Seidman says. “We algorithmically match queries to the underlying photos to bring you relevant results.”

When you plug in your check-in and checkout dates, you also get real-time availability information, Seidman says.

Oyster also literally stores about 20 resolutions of each image so it can match the proper image to the monitor size, whether it be an iPad, a smartphone or a PC, Seidman says.

For its hotel photography portfolio, Oyster prides itself on avoiding marketing photos submitted by the hotels.

“Too often, hotel guests are misled by doctored marketing photos, which leads to disappointment and dissatisfaction in accommodations,” says Elie Seidman, cofounder and CEO. “Oyster Shots lets our visitors see exactly what to expect before it’s too late so there are no unpleasant surprises — just perfect vacations.”

Perfect vacations or not, Oyster offers journalist-written hotel reviews for a couple of dozen destinations around the world.

And, the company apparently is going to make a big push with Oyster Shots. The website’s We’re Hiring! sectioin lists more than a dozen job opening for photographers in destinations from Melbourne and Sydney, Australia, to Madrid and Bermuda.

Bing Travel, too, offers visual search, integrated from Bing, and replete with auto-suggest functionality.

But when you select the Bing Travel gallery for Las Vegas hotels and then click on a photo of the MGM Grand Hotel & Casino, for example, you navigate out of Bing Travel to Bing.com and away from any transactional capabilities.

Another 37% expect to spend about the same on social media and 6% plan to trim their social media budgets in 2011, the survey found.

TripAdvisor plans to this survey, conducted Jan. 14 to Jan. 21 and attracted 1010 completed responses, an annual exercise.

It highlights TripAdvisor’s plans to engage and get chummier with its lodging customers, a priority punctuated by its plans to build a global customer service call center for consumers and owners.

Among other survey findings, 46% of the accommodations owners and managers have no plans in 2011 to offer any kind of mobile programs for their customers.

This leads one to wonder if survey participation was skewed toward owners and managers of B&Bs and inns rather than large hotels.

TripAdvisor spokesman Kevin Carter says “the survey was sent to a random sample of U.S. owners and managers in our database, representing a broad spectrum of accommodations. In this random selection were a mixture of registered owners, Business Listings subsribers and owners who have neither registered nor become subscribers.”

Some 27% of respondents indicated that they plan to introduce mobile programs for the first time in 2011, and another 27% plan to retain the mobile programs they ran in 2010.

When it comes to TripAdvisor’s core product, hotel reviews, 99% of respondents said they plan to respond to user reviews in 2011, with 72% indicating they would respond to both positive and negative critiques.

Property photos are said to be very effective in attracting guests and 67% of accommodations’ ownersand managers in the survey indicated they will post 1-10 photos on TripAdvisor of each of their properties in 2011.

Ten percent of respondents said they posted11-20 photos of each of their properties on TripAdvisor in 2010, but 26% plan to do so in 2011, the survey found.

On the ancillary fees’ issue, which has been embraced by the airline industry, the vast majority of accommodations’ owners and managers — at least those survey by TripAdvisor —  have no plans to jump on the bandwagon in terms of increasing the fees they charge.

The survey found that 94% of lodging owners and managers have no plans to charge additional fees for amenities while 6% have plans to increase amenities’ fees.

Speaking of fees, 91% of respondents said they plan to offer free in-room Internet access in 2011, while 5% will charge a fee and 4% won’t offer the service, the survey found.

“TripAdvisor’s first annual Accommodation Owners Survey suggests that the hotel industry is still being affected by a slow economy, as the majority of respondents don’t forsee room rate increases this year,” says Christine Petersen, president of TripAdvisor for Business. “Yet, savvy hoteliers are attempting to stand apart from the crowd by embracing social media, launching mobile marketing features and offering the programs consumers demand most.”

Here’s a recent YouTube video from the hotel-focused Orbitz ad blitz, which has the tag line, “When you Orbitz, you know:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5lqtQNeG8A

On July 15, Orbitz Worldwide President and CEO Barney Harford tweeted about the campaign: “No-one likes a know-it-all until they need to book a hotel. Bless you, cannonball. Know what to expect from your vacation. http://ow.ly/2C3FS

A few hours later, Seidman retweeted Harford’s tweet.

Seidman tweeted: “Orbitz ad is good but is divorced from product reality of Orbitz. RT @barneyh: Know what to expect from your vacation http://ow.ly/eC3FS

Seidman claims that Orbitz and the hotels themselves distribute hotel photos and descriptions that can be misleading to customers because they depict images of pristine settings and amenities that may not reflect the actual circumstances.

“The gall of Orbitz’s ad is that it describes the customer problem — not knowing what I’m going to get when I show up at the hotel — and implies that Orbitz solves it,” Seidman says.

Oyster, which offers journalist-written hotel reviews for a limited number of destinations, has been running Oyster Photo Fakeouts, which purport to portray the gap between the images of hotel publicists and more realistic portrayals on Oyster.com.

Oyster put together a series of what it describes as Orbitz photo fakeouts.

“But as the photo fakeouts of Orbitz show, Orbitz is a part of the problem it claims to solve, and self-evidently is not the solution,” Seidman says. “Their ads, while funny, ring hollow and Orbitz and their ad agency,BBDO, need to be taken to task for this.”

So, take a look at some of Seidman’s Orbitz fakeouts — and judge for yourself.

Here’s a poolside photo from Orbitz.com at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas:

Here’s the actual scene that a visitor might experience at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, according to the Oyster photo below:

Orbitz, however, does indeed have a photo in its Hard Rock photo slideshow, which Seidman didn’t submit, depicting a crowded pool. Here it is below:

The following is an Orbitz photo of the beach at the JW Marriott Ihilani Resort & Spa in Oahu:

And, the following is Oyster’s depiction of the same beach — albeit at a different time with cranes in the background — at the JW Marriott Ihilani Resort & Spa in Oahu:

Here’s another example of what Oyster considers an Orbitz fakeout. This is is an Orbitz photo of the Hyatt Regency Washington:

And, here’s the Oyster photo showing the Hyatt Regency Washington’s front entrance:

Here’s another tranquil pool setting from Orbitz. This one is at Sofitel in Los Angeles:

Meanwhile, the Oyster image of the pool at Sofitel in Los Angeles makes sure to get Macy’s into the photo:

Orbitz spokesman Brian Hoyt didn’t comment directly about Oyster’s compilation of alleged Orbitz photo fakeouts, but said:

“No one in the industry offers the comprehensive content, resources and service that makes up the hotel assurance we provide consumers who book a hotel on Orbitz. No one has total-price hotel display like Orbitz. Orbitz has Hotel Price Assurance, where if another customer books a hotel room for less on our site, a check is in the mail.”

“Then add on features like hotel reviews (from customers we verify stayed at the property), features like Google Street View and the other hotel information resources,” Hoyt says. “Add to that our history of innovation in other parts of our business like customer care and simply put: We’re happy to go head to head with any travel site. So bring it.”

What do you think?

Should online travel agencies, such as Orbitz, begin to publish more realistic photos?

That would empower consumers, but probably wouldn’t make hotel partners very happy.