The photobooth market - France

A photobooth (or automatic photo booth) is a portrait-taking machine consisting of a booth with a seat where the person wishing to be photographed sits. The machine automatically develops and prints the photographs, and is usually located in a public place, allowing the user to take individual or group passport photos or self-portraits alone. The service is subject to a fee. The photomaton market can be seen as a segment of the professional photography market , but also of the "leisure" photography market, in that it can be used to produce official, standardized passport photos, but also to take more personal photos. Photobooths can also be hired for private, corporate or other events. We can differentiate between photobooth rental for events and photobooths located in public places for standard photos. Photobooths are subject to regulatory constraints when it comes to taking official ID photos: to comply with government standards, the photo booth must use a system approved by the French Ministry of the Interior. The development of the photobooth market is linked to the growth in the number of supermarkets, hypermarkets and shopping malls in France, as well as their penetration rate in railway stations and other public places. However, photobooths are facing increasing competition from digital web services that allow customers to print and personalize their photos: photobooths are therefore gradually adapting to technological developments, and self-service kiosks are springing up in France. The health crisis linked to COVID-19 was largely unfavorable for the automatic photo booth market. Indeed, with the closure of shopping malls, the reduction in traffic in various stations (train, metro, etc.) and the digitization of administrative services, the sector saw a drop in revenues.