When it comes to serving international travelers, businesses often find themselves struggling to balance two vital needs.
On one hand, customers want personalized content in their preferred languages, and they’d like to work with local contacts at the properties where they book to ensure a bespoke, memorable experience.
On the other hand, the technical challenges of managing booking, listings, CMSs and other operational complexities can make localized, personalized content—not to mention routing the right content to local contacts in the region—seem impossible.
But it's easier than you might think to give customers the customized content they want, connect them with your local resources, and equip your regional salespeople for success without draining your resources. It just takes the right technology.
Why Personalized Content Matters to Travelers
Traveling is a highly personal experience. Customers want to feel comfortable and cared for. They're looking for brands that make them feel understood and appreciated-brands that help them feel right at home, even when they're halfway around the world.
For starters, your company can go a long way toward building customers' trust and loyalty by making personal contact with them in their preferred languages. Often, that contact happens in two key ways:
- Personalized, dynamic content generated while the customer is online—such as email responses and booking confirmations
- Personal contact offline with your regional sales teams—such as inquiries and requests for further information
But most third-party booking engines translate only generic booking information-things like reservation details and property addresses-and leave out the details and differentiators that set your brand apart. This includes specialized amenities, property features and distinctive offers for local guests.
These distinctive features should also be presented within a regional context for global travelers, whenever possible, to maximize their curiosity and interest—which can improve ability to convert.
Customers look for brands that make them feel at home, even when they’re halfway around the world.
Plus, inferior translation solutions can’t easily handle content that’s displayed on your site or in your communications through third-party software, multimedia content, dynamic PDFs and other digital offerings that deliver personalized experiences to travelers.
Centralizing some of these communications through a corporate hub might seem like a good idea, but those hubs can easily get overwhelmed trying to manage dozens if not hundreds or thousands of global bookings. Further, customers usually bristle at automated, impersonal communications that feel generic and canned.
Equip Your Regional Sales Teams to Make More Conversions
Your regional sales teams can step in to solve a lot of these challenges with a personal, localized touch—but only if they’re equipped to do so.
They’ll need content that is accurately and deftly translated for international travelers, localized for the regional markets they represent, and personalized to help customers feel like individuals whose business you value.
Getting that done might seem overwhelming, but great translation solutions make this process easy for you. Look for vendors and technologies that offer simple, cost-effective ways to create:
Personalized Customer Responses
Forms, emails, and other details beyond your primary customer-facing website can all be translated into a customer’s preferred language, making it easy for them to book with you.
Properly Directed Inquiries
With the right translation solution, you can translate and send customer requests (like completed forms on your website) directly to your regional teams and local brick-and-mortar locations. This way, in-market customer support can easily assist with specific requests.
Localized Marketing
Different markets have different holidays, unique regional events, and currencies that you can translate and localize to fit each market where the travelers you’re targeting live and work.
All of this localized content empowers your regional sales teams to reach out to customers and follow up bookings with a personal touch—which means more conversions, more sales and ultimately more bottom-line return on your marketing investments.
The Right Technology Can Help
Not all translation partners and vendors are the same.
Many can help you translate words on your website, but only the best can help you customize, personalize and localize all of your content, including internal booking web pages, print documentation, customer communications and offline content.
You’ll recognize a great translation vendor because they:
Provide a fully turn-key, proxy translation technology that operates independently of your CMS, and can work flexibly with any other back-end website technology you have.
Handle content beyond your flagship website, such as third-party applications, dynamic forms and more
Recognize the customer’s country of origin and preferred language, and respond by sharing only relevant, localized user experiences and contact information
Work behind the scenes so your localized online and offline customer experience is seamless, fast and satisfying
The bottom line: Great translation solutions make it simple for your regional teams to provide a smooth, easily navigable, localized and personalized user experience to your travel customers. That can help you win their business, and their loyalty, for life.
Last updated on May 01, 2018
