 3 Min. Read |
 Reagan Evans |
 March 09, 2018 |
You’ve invested heroic effort into making your hotel brand’s website the best it can be for customers in your flagship market. Your international customers expect the very same world-class online experience.
If they don’t feel instantly welcome and comfortable on your website, they’ll often walk away … right into your competitors’ waiting arms.
Keep reading to discover how you can give your global customers the best-possible first impression online.
You wouldn’t want guests getting lost or confused in your hotel. Your website shouldn’t be any different.
International customers should quickly find what they’re looking for every time they visit your site. Navigation should be smooth and intuitive. Important information must be easy to find. And to make the experience as effortless as possible, you must translate your website’s content.
But it’s not enough to offer a website in a global customer’s preferred language. You must make it effortless to access that localized experience, too. Traditionally, websites accomplish this by presenting users with a “language selector” in the website’s navigation. But there’s a better way.
You wouldn’t want guests getting lost or confused in your hotel. Your international websites shouldn’t be any different.
Great intelligent language-detection technologies can automatically greet first-time website visitors in the languages they’re most likely to speak. These technologies can also anticipate customers’ other preferences, including country of residence and currency. The best tech remembers these preferences for return visits—and supports cookie law compliance, too.
This can increase the traffic and conversion rates of your localized sites.
You know all too well that if site visitors experience any friction during the online reservation experience, they’ll find another room somewhere else. But don’t overlook the opportunity to improve their experience well before they ever consider booking a room.
You have a great deal of control over your hotel’s branding and descriptions, even in global markets. Localizing your online assets for global customers—whose preferred language is probably different than your flagship market’s—makes it easy for your them to learn about your properties and vacation experiences.
This is where nuanced, evocative localizations can really help your properties shine. Don’t settle for commoditized, bare-bones descriptions from underqualified translators. Make it a priority to replicate your evocative, brand-perfect prose for all markets, not just for sites in your flagship language. Great translations sell the dream of a great vacation destination … and helps you rank in regional search engines, too.
Proxy-based translation solutions can easily deliver on this need. You can customize your translations with the keywords that describe your brand, and help support a seamless conversion funnel for global users.
And speaking of regional search engines: A solid SEO strategy is vital for generating interest and conversions from international customers.
Global users, especially in markets with low awareness of your brand, aren’t likely to look for your hotel by name. It’s far more likely that they’ll use search terms that reflect what kind of trip they’re taking, or what kind of hotel they prefer. For instance, “affordable hotels in Madrid near Prado Museum” or “resort hotels in Orlando with shuttle to theme parks.”
A solid SEO strategy is vital for generating interest and conversions from international customers.
Consider your brand image and the kind of experience your hotel provides. Are you a luxury resort hotel, or a family-friendly budget hotel? Do you have locations near convention centers, historical sites, or popular travel destinations? Are there timely events that draw in tourists, like world-renowned festivals?
Consider the words that guests would use to describe your hotel, and optimize your translation accordingly to include those keywords.
First impressions are everything. Ensure your hotel’s website serves the needs of your future international guests with a superior website translation solution. MotionPoint provides accurate translation without sacrificing the design and navigation of your website, and provides language-detection technology to proactively offer users their preferred in-language online experience.
MotionPoint’s solution puts you in full control of your brand image, even on third-party booking engines.
MotionPoint’s proxy-based solution puts you in control of your brand image, no matter where your content lives—even on third-party booking engines. And our translation teams are comprised of marketing-savvy linguists that can optimize your translations for local search engines.
Hoteliers like Fontainebleau Miami Beach trust MotionPoint with their multilingual websites. If you’re looking to smartly serve your global guests, it’s time you did, too.
