But you know the feeling, right? You’re minding your own business, reading an article, or you’re using a web-based email program like Gmail. All of a sudden, you see an ad for the exact pair of shoes you were looking at on Zappos last Tuesday. I get this thought that lasts for like a millisecond, “What a weird coincidence!” before my brain kicks in and I remember that companies have data. Lots of it – and some of it is about me. And they’re using it to get my attention.

As a side note, I ran across this blog post from EyeforTravel a few weeks ago called Hyper-Personalization – Is your company ready? It’s about one of my favorite topics: the travel customer’s personalized online experience.

I’ll leave the advantages (targeted advertising!) and disadvantages (potential privacy issues!) for other people’s blogs. Instead, I’d just like to mention that this strategy isn’t going away anytime soon, and in fact, some of the world’s largest advertisers are really honing their personalization strategies.

To them, I say this: don’t forget language. What’s more personal than the language in which you think, shop, speak, write and chat? So don’t you feel a special connection to companies who take that into consideration and communicate with you in your language? Consistently? Appropriately? Effectively?

It seems like such an obvious conclusion, but many companies haven’t figured it out yet. Those that have are seeing increased revenues as a direct result. Which reminds me that I should remind you of the Common Sense Advisory Research highlighted in this Harvard Business Review post, “Speak to Global Customers in Their Own Language.”

Check out both of these articles and please let me know if you’d like to chat about your organization’s personalization efforts.

In his article, Andrew Stockwell shares the following event highlights:

1. Marketing within China has strongly embraced the “age of the customer.” This means investing in: real-time customer intelligence, the customer experience, a sales channel that delivers customer intelligence, and content and interactive marketing.
2. People, processes and technology have no choice but to evolve, and marketing efforts (including budget and team) should be organized by what presenter Nate Elliott called “RaDaR” efforts – Reach and Depth and Relationship.
3. eCommerce is making progress, but isn’t quite there yet. Speakers Daniell Wigder and Kelland Willis demonstrated that, “brands are not capitalizing on the social nature of shoppers in China.”  (Didn’t these companies read my blog post last year, Lessons in Chinese Social Media Marketing?)
4. And finally, security and privacy is still a perceived issue in China (well, all markets, actually). This wasn’t a big focus at the Forrester event, but it came up and will be included in their research initiatives this year.

Now, even though the Forrester event and Andrew Stockwell’s highlights are focused on China, you can bet your bottom dollar they have a wider reach than that…

Interestingly, John’s research shows that of all the T&H industry categories (Air travel, Cruise lines, Car rentals, etc.), Theme Parks received the lowest web globalization scores. He attributes at least part of that to the fact that theme parks are, by their nature, global destination spots. They don’t need to put a lot of marketing effort and budget into reaching global, multilingual audiences because those people are already looking for them and are willing (and typically able) to make use of whatever website is available.

I think this brings up a really good point. Is it always necessary to fully globalize a website?

Don’t Go Overboard with Globalization

Of course not. We’ve talked before about the importance of developing an effective language and globalization strategy, right? Some of the most important topics I cover in my customer conversations include their global business and marketing objectives and what part their website plays (or should play) in meeting those objectives.

It would be tempting to assume that every company should make every page of their website available in every language. But there are many line items on a marketing budget, and sometimes – yes, it’s true – sometimes a multilingually tricked out website doesn’t make the cut, nor does it need to.

Best Practices Still Apply

However, if a website is offered in more than one language, I still think it should be done as well as possible. This means making the available languages easy to find, and using a consistent template regardless of the language chosen. Those are the two areas of improvement that John identified while reviewing the websites for Disney, SixFlags, SeaWorld, Universal Parks and Cedar Fair.

He provides very specific examples and suggestions for improvement – which actually apply to any company’s website – so take a look at his report (“The Best Global Websites in Travel & Hospitality“) when you have a moment and see how your website compares!

For instance, according to YouTube (www.youtube.com/t/press_statistics)…

Lots of people create and watch videos:

• Over 800 million unique users visit YouTube each month
• Over 4 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube
• 72 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute

Videos have global appeal:

• 70% of YouTube traffic comes from outside the US
• YouTube is localized in 53 countries and across 61 languages.

Now, we know the good people at YouTube wouldn’t offer their site with such global customization if there weren’t an audience for it.

So riddle me this: if you’ve gone through the effort of creating a great marketing video, don’t you want it to reach your intended audience in their own language, especially since we know people of all regions and in all languages are open to watching videos?

(And also, if you haven’t created a marketing video yet, what are you waiting for? But I digress.)

Assuming your answer is, “yes, I DO want my video to reach my global customers in their own languages,” then I may have a cool service you could use. (As always, I’m hesitant to write about Lionbridge services because that’s not the purpose of this blog, but this is seriously cool stuff that could really increase the ROI of your video marketing efforts in multiple ways.)

Check it out: it’s called Rapid Video Translation, and it’s all about taking your already great video content and transcribing, translating, subtitling and publishing it for all the world to see and hear. And understand. And respond to.

Please hit Lionbridge.com for more details, or give me a yell. I would love to tell you all about it!

If you were with us for “The Best Global Travel Websites – and Why” webinar, you learned about why a universal global gateway is better than an overtranslated one. And how responsive design fits in and why it’s so hot right now. (And who’s doing it well!)

John talked about those and just a ton of other great web globalization best practices for the travel/hospitality industry, such as:

• How many languages websites should support (and why)
• Language negotiation and why it’s important
• Language parity between PC and Mobile websites – and why it might be easier to have a multilingual mobile site than traditional PC website
• Why travelers have unique online requirements and what you can do to support them
• How global, mobile and social work together
• And much more…

Interested in these topics?

If you missed the call, I strongly encourage you to watch the webinar replay. And if you haven’t read John’s report yet, “The Best Global Websites in Travel & Hospitality,” run don’t walk: http://info.lionbridge.com/JY_Travel_Report_2013.

Enjoy learning from John’s vast knowledge and expertise. I’ve been working in this area for years, and I still learn something new every time I listen to him.

Happy globalizing!

So the question may not actually be, “why add Manaus,” but rather, “why such a big focus on Brazil in the first place?”

The State of the Brazilian Economy

Let’s start with the fact that Brazil is home to more than 200 million people, giving it the largest population in Latin America. Economically speaking, Brazil has the sixth-largest economy in the world with more Global 500 companies than all Latin American countries combined (including Mexico). Specifically, the combined revenue of the Brazilian Global 500 is almost US$500 billion.

Of course, American Airlines is far from the only travel company expanding in Brazil. “It’s a crucial time to venture to the BRICS countries such as Brazil and Russia, as these cultures are rapidly changing due to the speed of globalization, economic growth and world-scale recognition,” observed Thor Forsberg, Destination Manager, Europe. “Each of these countries has their own special rhythm, from the contemporary design culture in Sao Paulo to the dynamic art scene in Moscow.” (Top Travel Trends for 2013, TravelAge West, October 2012)

The State of Social in Brazil

That’s the economic status. Now let’s take a brief look at the online picture. Last month, The Wall, a UK-based digital and social media blog, published a post called, Brazil is revealed as the Social Media Capital of the world, with many juicy stats, including:

• Brazil is the second biggest Facebook market outside the US, with 65 million users.
• Brazil is the second biggest market outside the US for YouTube.
• Brazil is one of Twitter’s top-five active user groups.

There are many more great nuggets of information in The Wall’s post, and I highly recommend you read the whole thing.

And of course, Mobile

In 2011, there were more people in Brazil accessing the internet via mobile devices than via desktops or laptops. Mobile is huge in Brazil because it’s more reliable and accessible than broadband in the homes (which won’t reach 50% of households until after 2016).

To learn more about the state of technology and internet usage in Brazil, take a look at eMarketer’s report, To Expand Online Access, Brazil Goes Mobile (eMarketer, October 2012).

Put It All Together, and What Do You Get?

Okay, that’s a lot of statistics and trends. But when you put it all together, I think what we see is a fantastic opportunity for travel and hospitality companies to serve Brazilian visitors with relevant information via social media, and to give them a top-notch mobile experience. And don’t wait – I’m pretty sure things will continue going in this direction for a while.

Thank you to Emerson Barroca in the Lionbridge São Paulo office for his contributions to this article!

(Is it too early for me to be dreaming of attending the FIFA World Cup in 2014 or the 2016 Summer Olympic Games? I can’t help it – anyone else?)

Survey Highlights

Based on the responses from 114 hoteliers in Europe (UK, Italy, France and Germany), it’s clear that the use of social media marketing among this group has increased over the last year, and is expected to continue increasing through 2013:

It’s also cool to see that 61% of the respondents spend 1-3 hours per week reading and responding to online reviews about their hotel properties. Even though it seems like common sense to do this (and to translate the reviews that appear on your website), many companies don’t have the hang of it yet, so I applaud those who do and encourage those who don’t.

Learn More

There are several articles (I’ve listed some below) that already cover the details of the Choice Hotels Europe survey, so I won’t re-state them here. I do, however, encourage you to read the articles if you’re interested in learning more of the nitty-gritty:

• Choice Hotels’ Survey Reveals Hoteliers Attitudes to Social Media and Reviews (Hotel Business)
• Hoteliers spend hours responding to online reviews (TravelMole)
• Choice Hotels Europe reveal time hoteliers spend responding to online travel reviews (Breaking Travel News)

Tweet me if you actively use social media to market your hotel or to monitor what your customers are saying! Email me if you don’t but want to learn how.

Regardless of your situation, I’ve got great news for you. Our good friend, dynamite speaker and world renowned web globalization expert, John Yunker, will present the results of his recent Travel & Hospitality website study on March 6 in a free Lionbridge-sponsored webinar.

John will focus on how travel and hospitality companies have taken their websites and mobile apps global, and specifically, he’ll cover best practices for language, web architecture and navigation. He’ll also share some common missteps, and don’t you think learning from others’ mistakes is better than learning from your own?

Please plan to join us for what I’m sure will be one of the best presentations of the year, where you’ll learn about:

• Best practices in web globalization – and emerging trends
• Profiles of websites including Hotels.com, Delta Airlines, and Hertz
• The hottest languages on the web today
• Mobile considerations to save time and improve the user experience

Webinar Details

See you there!

So it’s no surprise to me that John Yunker included a whole “Mobile” section in his new report that I’ve been talking about lately, “The Best Global Websites in Travel & Hospitality.”

Although as John points out, we’re all still learning what makes a dynamite mobile app or website, some things are already clearly emerging as “import considerations.” I’ll outline some of them here, but highly recommend you download his free report for the details and many Travel and Hospitality industry examples.

Key Considerations when Creating the Ideal Global Mobile Web Experience

1. Language Parity and Languages Offered. This is simply the expectation that your mobile presence (either standalone app or mobile version of your website) is available in the same languages you offer on your primary or traditional website. Customers love consistency.By the way, after English, the next most popular languages found in John’s study are French, Spanish and German. I imagine you would have guessed those. But which language do you think comes next? There are 15 leading languages listed in his report. Just for fun, you should try to think about what they are before you read it. I think a few may surprise you.
2. Responsive Design (or “Adaptive Design”). Are you familiar with these terms? If you’re responsible for anything related to mobile web development or design, you should be. It basically means creating a website that automatically presents itself in the right format regardless of the device and browser on which it’s viewed.There are several elements of this design concept including website layout, size of images, interactive elements (buttons, forms, etc.) and language detection. John’s report gives more details about this concept, as well as examples of sites that address this consideration.
3. Device-Centric Approach. Going a step beyond a responsive design, some leading Travel and Hospitality companies have actually integrated functionality for specific devices (e.g. the iPad) into their mobile apps. Hotels.com provides a good example of this. Guess where you can find more examples and details.

There’s a lot to learn and many opportunities to stand out as the web gets more mobile and more global. Today’s assignment is to read the “Web Globalization and Mobile” section in John’s report. Then get out your mobile device and explore – it’s one of the best ways you can decide what you like and whether it’ll work for your organization. Have fun!

Thank you, John Yunker, for stating that so strongly. Sounds harsh, but it’s true. A web manager can create the most beautiful, information-packed, professionally translated website in every one of the company’s target languages, but if it never reaches the target audience, it’s not just worthless, it’s a waste of money.

That’s why a Global Navigation strategy is critical. To underscore how critical it is, Global Navigation makes up 25% of a company’s website score in John’s January 2013 report, “The Best Global Websites in Travel & Hospitality.”

For the most part, the elements to consider when it comes to designing the best global navigation strategy for your website include:

• Global Gateway: This is simply a company’s web page (sometimes also known as a “splash” page) that acts as a front door. You typically see this the first time you visit a website. Once you select your preferred country/language, it remembers your choice so that the next time you visit, it displays your preferred version of the site.
• Geolocation: 23 of the 71 companies John reviewed in his report use geolocation to help direct users to local content. One way some sites do this is by reading the IP address of the user’s computer. Based on the number, you can often tell where it is, therefore, the company can make assumptions about which version of the website to display.
• Language Negotiation: Some websites can align themselves with the user’s web browser language setting. This is another fairly safe assumption, but not always accurate. The best user experience includes being in charge of how they experience a website, so while language negotiation is helpful, companies should not rely on it alone to give the user what they want.
• Consistency: Be sure to create your global gateway “consistently across all localized websites.” This is important in so many areas, and you’ll see that as your company (and target market) grows, the best way to offer a manageable, scalable website it to be consistent in everything, including global navigation.
• Quality: As with everything else in the world of web, test in-country within multiple regions before you launch a site with a new global gateway. I’ve seen some do more damage than if there had been no page at all.

There’s a lot to know about global navigation, and sometimes the best way to get inspiration and see what works well is to visit the sites that have already figured it out, so be sure to download John’s report and visit the sites that scored well in this category. (He also highlights a few that haven’t done so well in this area, and explains how they could improve.)

By the way, in addition to Hotels.com and Delta, both of which John cites in his report as very effective displays of global navigation strategies, he also blogged about another great example (Whatsapp, which is non-travel related but we like it anyway) about two months ago on his Global by Design blog. Check it out!