Travel & Hospitality
Translating Reviews on Travel & Hospitality Websites
The Lionbridge Travel team is an inquisitive bunch. Today we’re thinking about the translation of reviews within the Travel & Hospitality industry.
Say a customer writes a review in English of your hotel. Your website is in French, Spanish and Japanese, so do you translate that customer’s review into all three languages? If so, how do you do it? And do you translate all reviews, or just some? If you don’t translate any of them, why don’t you? Like I said, we’re curious. Continue reading »
Strengthening Global Brands – Webinar for Travel and Hospitality
Does the phrase “multilingual marketing” give you hives? Are you struggling with the challenges of protecting your brand’s integrity around the world? Do you wish someone would host a free webinar about these types of issues, specifically focused on the Travel and Hospitality industry? Guess what, you’re in luck!
First, the Context
We all know it’s one thing to develop a brand and an entirely different thing to tell the world about it. But why does it have to be like that? Because communicating the unique nuances of marketing messages between cultures can be a tricky (and I do mean tricky) process. Just because your brand, copy and campaigns succeed in your native language and culture, there’s no guarantee the rest of the world will get it. In fact, truth be told, it’s pretty uncommon for one message to resonate within multiple markets around the world.
Would you like a couple of examples? Continue reading »
Keyword Localization, a Lionbridge Case Study
I try not to talk about Lionbridge projects in this blog because that might be boring for you and a bit self-serving for us. But today I’m making an exception because we recently published a case study about Global Search Marketing that I think you’ll find pretty interesting. It’s all about how our teams localized 100,000 search terms for one of the world’s leading online travel agencies. Continue reading »
Translation and Localization, What’s the Difference?
I thought I’d take a step back today to look at something that comes up in almost every customer conversation I have. And if you read the blog title up there, you already know what that is: “What’s the difference between translating something and localizing it?” And believe me when I say this really applies to global travel and hospitality companies. Not only do you need to translate material for many of your customers, but quite often the material being translated is critical to the success of their travels and therefore, their relationship with you. Continue reading »
Three Best Practices for Developing a Global Mobile Travel App
Believe it or not, developing a mobile-friendly, multilingually-accurate, globally-accessible, culturally-appropriate travel and hospitality app isn’t as easy as it sounds.
Although there’s no way I can detail the actual how-to’s of this important objective in a blog post, there are some ideas I can share with you that might get you pointed in the right direction. Before I go on, though, let’s agree on a few things:
- Your audience expects immediate information to support their travel and hospitality goals.
- The world is mobile enough now to warrant a significant focus on developing mobile apps.
- Customer acquisition, retention and loyalty are much higher when you communicate in your customers’ native languages.
If you need convincing of any of those three areas, please add a Comment to this post so we can chat, but assuming we’re on the same page, let’s continue… Continue reading »
Mobile App Fatigue
I’ve blogged about mobile strategies before (e.g. “Translation of Mobile Websites and Apps in the Travel Industry,”) and wanted to share something related to that which has been on my mind recently. I think it can be tempting for companies to think a good strategy is all about, “How can we do everything?” But the best strategies are really about figuring out the right things to do while not ignoring, but deliberately identifying things you won’t do.
Specifically, I’ve been seeing travel companies engage in complex conversations about how to integrate a web app into their online market strategy, without first considering whether they (read: their customers) really need an app in the first place, or whether a fully optimized and localized mobile website would do the trick (especially if they were to follow some advice in a related article about mobile strategies for travel companies on Tnooz, please see links below). Continue reading »
Spanish Variants for Global Websites
Have you ever been in a website strategy meeting where one person says, “Let’s add Spanish to our site,” and another person says, “Great idea! Which kind of Spanish: European, US, International, or the Argentine-Uruguayan-Paraguayan variant?” And then that first person says, “Ummm… excuse me?”
It’s one of the most common and interesting conversations I get to be a part of in my role as localization professional. The reason it’s so interesting is that there is no one right answer to the “which kind of Spanish” question. The successful answer really hinges on how well you know your target audience and their expectations. Since Spanish is the official language in 21 countries, it’s not surprising that there are so many variations. Continue reading »
Learn from Top-Ranked Global Website: Hotels.com
I read a great post on John Yunker’s “Global by Design” blog last week, “Hotels.com: The best global travel website,” which I’m sure you’ll all appreciate. He talks about the strengths of this top-ranked global travel site, and (I love this) he also makes some suggestions that would make it even better. Continue reading »
