Travel Sites not Catering to International Users
September 10th, 2008
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.”
Nearly all the people Oban interviewed said they would prefer to search in their own language, says Greig.
Though some of the major travel search engines do have limited multilingual options, the consensus among the interviewees seemed to be that in general, this was not the case.
Ricardo Moreno from Venezuela is currently living in London on his own. He said that it’s very important to him that a travel site have multilingual accessibility so that he may pass on information to his Spanish-speaking relatives.
“My parents and my sister are coming to Europe,” he said, “And they don’t speak English. So for me to give them advice through the internet, I have to have Spanish content to show them. So I prefer multilingual.”
This trend represents a missed opportunity for travel websites that could gain increased traffic by catering to these international travellers’ needs.
It is important to note, Greig says, that mere translation is not the answer. He points out that the content has to be written from scratch in the target language for proper optimisation.
Interestingly, one interviewee pointed out that the trend works the other way around in other countries. Jakob Eutkowski, a real estate agent in Poland, said that the English content on Polish travel websites is of very poor quality.
“The English language either doesn’t work, or wasn’t well prepared to translate all the words on the website …and I think that’s the problem with Polish websites, is that they’re not well prepared to look for something in English.”
This means that the Polish sites would not be visible to English-speakers on their way to Poland.
Clearly there is an opportunity worldwide for travel sites to reach new markets by listening to their potential market, and catering to their multilingual needs.
To see Oban’s short video, visit www.faceofglobalsearch.com.
