For the other newbies out there: I have found a quick solution for anyone else who runs into this issue - for non-360 degree panoramas I had created a new hotspot skin style in the "vrtourskin.xml" file with distortion set to "false" :
<style name="hotspotstyle1" url="vtourskin_hotspot.png" scale="0.5" edge="top" oy="0"
distorted="false"
onclick="if(linkedscene, tween(scale,0.25,0.5); tween(oy,-20,0.5); tween(alpha,0,0.5); looktohotspot(); loadscene(get(linkedscene),null,MERGE,BLEND(1)); skin_updatescroll(); );"
onhover="if(skin_settings.tooltips_hotspots, if(linkedscene, showtext(get(scene[get(linkedscene)].title),SKIN_TOOLTIPS)) );"
/>