In the past, people often turned to travel agents and other points of contact to plan their vacations. Make no mistake: that era has long since ended.
Not only has COVID made the prospect of face to face encounters with strangers less appealing, these days, just like much of the retail sector, people are conducting their own research and often turn to the Internet in order to do it - which means that travel companies need to go directly to these consumers in order to stand out in an increasingly crowded marketplace.
The translation of tourism content is a big part of how savvy travel eCommerce brands accomplish exactly that. It's a big part of how brands not only break down geographic borders but linguistic ones, too. It's also a process that requires you to keep a few key things in mind.
The impact of translation on travel eCommerce
During the process of creating travel plans, your average consumer will conduct an incredible amount of research before finally pulling the proverbial trigger and making arrangements.
They want to read as much about their potential destination as possible. They want to learn about all of the fun hot spots they might wish to see. They want insight from local experts to help confirm that they're making the right decision in the first place.
Therefore, if you want to target your global growth efforts on a particular region, you need to BECOME that local expert - and localized content is how you do it.
By going beyond simple translation and by localizing your content in a way that considers the preferences and culture unique to a particular region, you can help your customers feel more informed (and ultimately more secure) in their travel plans. It's also an unbeatable opportunity to cement your own competitive advantage in the marketplace. You're not just getting someone excited about traveling - you're getting them excited about traveling with you in particular.
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It's not about planning, it's about SMART planning
But again, you can't get to this point if you take a simple "one size fits all" approach to travel translation. Your efforts need to begin by coming up with a translation strategy that is unique to every market you're targeting. If you were attempting to expand into Latin America, for example, merely translating your content into Spanish isn't enough. Different countries speak different variations of Spanish - to say nothing of the major cultural differences that are also at play.
By offering a significant amount of information in the native languages of your customers, and by having applications and websites that are responsive on any device someone happens to be using, you're creating an incredible amount of value for your consumers before your relationship has even technically begun.
If you make it easy for someone to get answers to all of their important questions or find solutions to whatever challenges they happen to be facing, you're creating good will that will eventually be reflected back on your brand. People will start to feel like you understand what they want and what they need - thus generating another important opportunity to grow in the years ahead.
Yes, all of this requires a great deal of effort and investment (arguably less so now Machine Translation and Translation Automation has come into play) - but it's also something that many of your competitors either don't fully understand or aren't willing to invest in themselves. Keeping your global consumers up-to-date with helpful, localized and thoughtfully translated content is only going to get more important over the next decade and beyond.
Not only can localization help create short-term gains, but it's also the foundation of your long-term success as your business continues to expand. Regardless of what your overall strategy for expansion happens to be, that is a tremendously exciting position for any organization to be in.
If you'd like to find out more information about the ways in which you can leverage tourism translation to grow in the travel eCommerce marketplace, or if you just have additional questions that you'd like to discuss with someone in a bit more detail, please don't delay - contact Andovar today.
