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Prominent web reporter Christopher Elliott recently blogged about Oban’s research finding. His interpretation of Oban’s report sparked off debate about the question of discrimination towards non-English speakers on the World Wide Web. Read the post.

We want to know what you think! Our friends at Poll the People have set up a poll for you to voice your thoughts on the debate.

The question:

Do travel websites discriminate against non-English users?

Spanish: ¿Discriminan las páginas web de viajes a los usuarios de habla no inglesa?

German: Diskriminieren Reise-Webseiten nicht-englisch-sprechende Internetnutzer?

French: Les sites de voyage discriminent-ils les utilisateurs non-anglophones?

Chinese: 旅遊網站是否其是非英語使用者?

Czech: Myslíte si, že stránky o cestování diskriminují uživatele, kteří nemluví anglicky?

Slovak: Diskriminujú webové stránky o cestovaní tých užívateľov, ktorých rodným jazykom nie je angličtina?

Romanian: Este adevărat că site-urile româneşti discriminează nevorbitorii de limbă engleză?

Farsi:

آیا وبسایتهای سفر آنلاین نسبت به کاربران غیر انگلیسی زبان تبعیض قائل میشوند؟

Vote now:

International online customers say they are often forced to search in English

Travel sites do not cater to their international users. This was the finding of the www.obanmultilingual.com short documentary on international travel search behaviour.

In making the video, the Oban team travelled to London where they interviewed holidaymakers from over 40 countries. The interviewees were asked how they used the internet to research their trip to London.

The Oban team was surprised by their findings.

“What we had expected,” says Greig Holbrook, Oban’s managing director, “was that the travellers would say that they search in their native language. But instead, most of them admitted they were forced to search in English, since the travel sites often do not give them a multilingual option.” (more…)

Oban Multilingual and EyeforTravel have rounded up the results from their online travel competition survey and found some interesting trends emerging in online Chinese search behaviour.

Results showed that Chinese internet users don’t use Google very often. In fact, none of the Chinese respondents chose Google as their favoured travel search portal. (more…)