In an increasingly connected world, the tourism industry continues to expand. In recent years, influencers have been seeking out destinations and highlighting them in their social media posts, inspiring yet more holidaymakers to visit new places.
More people than ever are exploring different countries, ensuring that tourism is important to many economies worldwide.
A variety of factors will influence where people choose to go and which business to patronise while they are there. Inspiring images on Instagram may pique the interest of travellers, but they will always have concerns about cost, accessibility and communication.
Language barriers remain obstacles to attracting tourists. That’s why tourism translation is so crucial to the success of any business that relies entirely or even partly on tourists for its revenue.
Here’s why tourism translation will help you to attract travellers to your destination or organisation:
Tourism translation raises your profile
Travellers won’t visit you if they don’t know you are there or don’t properly understand what you do. Reaching out to clients in their own language will help them to find you and to explore your offering.
It’s certainly important to publish your website in multiple languages. Most tourists research destinations and services online before making decisions about where to go and what to do while they are there.
Online content in their own language could be the factor that inspires travellers to visit a particular attraction, hotel or restaurant.
Search engines, including Google, rank websites according to relevance. Content displayed in the relevant language will achieve higher rankings and will therefore be more visible to those searching for information. Most potential visitors would simply ignore content displayed in a language that they don’t understand anyway, despite the ability to use Google Translate.
Put simply, you will reach a wider audience if you communicate in multiple languages.
You can improve customer experiences
Clear communication is essential to creating a positive tourist experience. When travellers can easily understand information about your services, they will feel more comfortable and confident. This will lead to better reviews and repeat business.
When visitors can understand all their options and can make informed decisions, they are far more likely to benefit from an enjoyable and memorable experience. There’s nothing worse than discovering after the fact that there were activities or menu items that you would have loved to try but were unaware of.
Enhanced customer experiences will lead to better reviews and inspiring social media posts. Your happy clients will do your marketing for you!
Translations enable you to build trust and credibility
Accurate and well-translated content demonstrates professionalism and attention to detail, which can significantly impact a tourist's perception of your business. A poor translation could create a negative impression and damage your reputation.
It would be hard to quantity just how damaging the impact of negative reviews online can be. Many travellers will rely on reviews when making their choices and will pay particular attention to the comments of reviewers who are repeat visitors to businesses.
You will boost revenue
Tourism translation services certainly enable you to access a wider audience and so will inevitably lead to increased bookings, sales, and overall revenue. When travellers have felt truly comfortable and welcome, they are more likely to return in the future.
It’s much easier to achieve growth when you benefit from repeat customers as the cost of client acquisition will be greatly reduced. Those repeat visits mean you don’t need to constantly seek new customers and so you your marketing costs will be lower and that will further boost your profits.
It’s crucial to inspire loyalty and there is no doubt that accurate translations will help you to do that.
Would your business benefit from tourism translation?
There are few businesses that wouldn’t! Whether your organisation is a tourism office, an attraction, a hotel, a publisher, a shop or a restaurant, translating your content and other materials can help attract customers.
Naturally, tourist guides are one of the more obvious examples of marketing materials that would require translation for tourism. At Word Connection, we have translated guides to numerous destinations including the Algarve and Oslo. Our managing director, Kaori Myatt, wrote a tourist guide for the Basque Country in Japanese called Terre Basque Mer Basque.
But we have also translated first class menus for executive jets, wine catalogues (the joys of being close to Bordeaux), websites for tourist boards and airport information sites.
Interpreting services also boast the potential to boost tourism. For instance, over the years we’ve enjoyed interpreting for Japanese journalists and film crews who make documentaries and write articles on the Basque Country.
Why is quality the key to success?
Translation is crucial to tourism and the quality of a translation can make all the difference. Bad translations lead to frustration, misunderstandings and poorer visitor experiences which in turn result in less favourable reviews. News travels fast online! It’s more important than ever for companies and organisations to get their translations right.
The comedic value of clumsy translations is no match for a strategy that employs experts to ensure that all published content and materials hit the mark.
Professional tourism translation will set your business apart and so can yield significant rewards.
