In 2015 the UK was visited by over 32.7 million overseas tourists. That’s a lot! And the majority do not speak English as a first language, in fact more than one third (38%) speak either French, German, Dutch, Italian or Spanish*. We are basically talking about 12.4 million people using five different overseas languages.
Those overseas tourists tend to stay longer during their holidays in the UK, as they are enjoying their holidays in a location far from their own countries (7.6 nights in average in 2014 vs. 2.9 nights in average for British tourists). So they are great guests to have.
Now we know that about 60% of those travellers won’t book accommodation on a website using a different language than their own! – That means if you want to attract these customers you need to have a website in their language!
Why do you need a website in their mother tongue?
- To explain to overseas travellers what experience and service they can expect during their stay at your property. Visuals are obviously important, but they must come with relevant descriptions.
- To reassure overseas tourists: If this property doesn’t translate its website, will they be able to communicate with me, give me advices or provide me with a good travel experience during my stay?
- Online visibility: a multilingual website will appear higher on search engines in the different languages used, so you will be easier to find by worldwide travellers wanting to visit the UK.
What should you translate?
Ideally, the whole booking process should be adapted for overseas tourists, from your website to the booking confirmation, allowing them to choose their local currency. Your customers will be puzzled if they receive a booking confirmation in English, after booking online in their own language. It only seems fair to cover their whole booking experience- our translation options give you the ability to do this inside eviivo suite.
How can eviivo help you?
Here’s the best bit: eviivo suite is the only booking suite to provide a FREE website template for your B&B that can be translated into all the main languages used by overseas travellers coming to the UK. For example:
You can see a simple drop down menu (shown above) allows your customers to browse between the available language and all that content is managed from one place inside eviivo suite, shown below.
And since we like to follow our own advice, your overseas clients can receive all the necessary documents for their stay (booking confirmations, cancellation confirmation, registration form…) translated in their own language as well.
Furthermore, those website templates are optimized for both smartphones and tablets, to improve your visibility even more: Google now prioritises responsive websites in its search results, and 65% of bookings made on the same day come from smartphones and tablets.
How to get good quality translations:
Of course all of that is not much use if the translations of your website text aren’t up to scratch, and we all know free tools like Google Translate are far from perfect! As such we’ve teamed up with translations provider Nativy to offer you affordable translations done by native speakers and checked by native speakers all for a very affordable price. Even better: We’ve integrated Nativy into eviivo suite so you can do all of this without ever leaving your eviivo suite!
To find this new translation app simply click on the Help button in the top right of your eviivo suite and then click the “website translation” button on the top menu:
If you want to find out how eviivo can help you to sell your rooms online by sharing your story worldwide, click here to book a demonstration with one of our team or start a 30 day free trial.
*Source: International Passenger Survey, Overseas Travel and Tourism, June 2015