Hoteliers are always faced with the challenge to reach out to a wider audience. To achieve global growth and reach international audiences, the hotel’s content marketing strategy needs to match the diversity of your online audiences.
Localisation and translation can be critical to an effective overall global marketing strategy for your hotel. Millions of words are published online, every minute, with the intention to build brands, sell products, evoke emotions and create reactions.
What is Localisation?
It is the process of adapting a product or content to a specific location or market. With a hotel room being sold across multiple locations, this can be a daunting prospect. And translation is just one element in the localisation process.
Why is Localisation so important?
- Multiple languages to maximize reach
- Words, imagery, color, comedy, music have different meanings to global audience
- Content is not universal
- One size does not fit all
- Creating personalised experiences require customisation
- Enhanced and possibly limitless distribution of your content
Website Localisation
This week we take a closer look at what localisation can mean for your website. As your hotel website is accessible from anywhere in the world, this is a critical area when it comes to localisation.
There is a strong chance that your website will be the first place any potential customer will visit to start the buying process and the first time they will “meet” the brand. Launching a multilingual version of your website is, relatively speaking, an economical way of going global. According to an independent research firm, Common Sense Advisory, 72% of consumers spend most or all of their time on websites in their own languages and only 27% of internet users speak English as their first language.
Here are some excellent tips to create content for the global online audience:-
- Keep text to minimum. Keeping it short and concise will keep the translation costs down. http://www.tnooz.com/article/eleven-things-to-know-about-translating-travel-websites/
- Keep text clear and unambiguous – http://www.tnooz.com/article/30-content-marketing-tips-for-independent-hotels-and-hotel-groups/
- Create source video with localisation in mind and offer travellers localised video guidebooks –http://www.tnooz.com/article/startup-pitch-vidtur-offers-travelers-localized-video-guidebooks/
- SEO and Keywords – To integrate SEO translation into your hotel marketing campaign, review the chosen keywords in the source. Different cultures may search for different words. http://www.koozai.com/blog/search-marketing/the-importance-of-localisation-in-international-seo/
- Keep graphics culturally generic – Different countries have different standards when it comes to visual content. Colours themselves connote specific emotions depending on which country you are targeting. http://hotelexecutive.com/business_review/3701/creating-materials-with-globalization-in-mind-a-best-practice