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:

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.

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. Google is struggling to win over Chinese internet users. Baidu is China’s most popular search engine. In fact, Baidu’s share of the Chinese internet search market rose to 64.4 percent in the second quarter of 2008.

As the internet gains popularity in China, its online market is becoming increasingly competitive. Try as it might, Google can only seem to grasp about a quarter of this market. Yet, search experts say it is not surprising that Chinese people are more drawn to their home-grown site than Western ones.

They give a few reasons for why the Chinese market continues to remain elusive to Google.

First, the millennia-old Chinese language differs immensely from Latin-based languages. Pinpointing queries in the Chinese language is an art rather than a science.

Chinese people type by using a US keyboard layout with Chinese labels printed on the keys. Their system converts typed letters to Chinese symbols by providing several options from which the user chooses the correct one.

Sandra Zerr, an expert on Chinese search behaviour at www.obanmultilingual.com, says that Chinese doesn’t work with letters but meanings. “Knowing how to speak doesn’t mean knowing how to write,” she says. “And seeing something doesn’t mean you know how to pronounce it.” Baidu, she explains, may be better than Google in predicting what is searched for based on symbols typed.

According to Baidu’s company profile, there are 38 ways of saying “I” in Chinese. Since they work only with the Chinese language, Baidu engineers are able to focus on integrating Chinese methods into the Western-based search engine system. Google seems to have trouble with the character-based language.

This leads into the second reason why Chinese people seem to prefer Baidu. According to Enquiro Research, there are technical problems with Google within China. Enquiro’s report on China’s search engine engagement showed that Google’s search algorithm is not adequately matched to Chinese users’ intent. In addition, the report shows that Google’s server is unstable in China. When it isn’t crashing, it is tediously slow. Google is also subjected to governmental restrictions that Baidu is not.

Finally, there is the ‘Chinese’ aspect to Baidu. China has longstanding traditions, and Chinese people are very nationalistic. Baidu can appeal to these preferences. The very name Baidu is a poetic Chinese name dating back 800 years. Baidu frequently advertises in China, representing itself as the strong Chinese warrior, and the silly, clueless westerner obviously symbolising Google.

So why should the travel industry care about Chinese internet search behaviour? Glad you asked.

Web use in China has grown by 500 percent over the past five years. There are now 137 million Chinese internet users, making it a bigger online market than the UK, France, and Germany combined.

This figure still only represents an eighth of China’s internet population. Bear in mind that two-thirds of the UK population are already online.

Over the past year alone, internet usage in China has jumped by a staggering 53 percent.

China’s online consumption hit nearly £30 billion in 2007. This number is predicted to rise by nearly 50 percent this year, according to a survey conducted in Netguide 2008.

Chinese internet users also tend to spend longer online than their Western counterparts. According to a study by major Beijing-based company Sohu.com, Chinese users average nearly 16 hours per week, whereas CNET says Brits only average 11.

China is by far the world’s largest internet market.  Of those Chinese on the internet, 90 percent (surveyed in August 2007) said they will shop online in 2008.

Greig Holbrook, managing director of www.obanmultilingual.com, says that because of these factors, it makes more sense than ever for travel companies to make sure that optimisation for China is focused on local search engines.

Travel sites take note: there is much more to the international online travel market than Google. The results from Oban and EyeforTravel’s online travel competition show that international internet surfers are expanding their search horizons to sites that give them more international usability, more options, ease of use, and of course, traveller reviews.

The Face of Global Search competition had entrants play a flash game in which they answered questions about their online travel search behaviour before advancing to the next level.

Questions sought to discover the entrant’s next holiday destination, important qualities in a travel site and frequency of holiday tickets booked online per year.

Next to English, Spanish and Chinese were cited as the most frequently used languages on the web. Next down the list were French and Dutch.

The UK was the most popular destination for entrants’ upcoming holidays (24 percent), while 15 percent were planning a trip to Spain. China and America were the third and fourth most popular planned travel destinations, followed by France, Italy, Greece and Canada.

Despite Google’s popularity, only a third of the respondents noted the site as their favourite for looking up travel destinations. Trip Advisor was favoured by 18 percent of the entrants, followed by Alibabuy, Expedia and Lastminute.com.

The most important quality that entrants looked for in a travel site was ease of use (30 percent). Half as many favoured traveller reviews (15 percent). Multilingual sites and sites with eye-catching design were also highly sought-after.

Only one percent of entrants said they never booked their tickets online. The majority of entrants (19 percent) booked holiday tickets online once a year. Only slightly fewer respondents said they booked online two and three times per year, at 13 and 11 percent respectively.

Perhaps even more interesting were the correlations that Oban found in the data.

Chinese speakers don’t Google

None of those who surf the internet in Chinese chose Google as their favoured travel search portal.

Under half of those planning a trip to Spain were frequent Googlers. About a third preferred Trip Advisor, while six percent used Alibabuy, and some used Lastminute.com.

Frequent online bookers prefer Expedia and Trip Advisor

Of the most frequent online ticket bookers, only 14 percent used Google to search. In this group, Expedia and Trip Advisor were favoured, with Opodo and Lastminute.com gaining honourable mentions.

Different site preferences for French and Greek holidays

Nearly two-thirds of those planning a trip to France as their next holiday were looking for easy-to-use travel sites, while the same percentage of those planning a trip to Greece said they would prefer to see traveller reviews on their travel sites. Over half of those planning their holiday in the UK wanted easy-to-use sites, with traveller reviews coming in at a distant second (20 percent).

Expedia and Lastminute.com users want easy-to-use sites

Overwhelmingly, those who used Expedia were looking for an easy-to-use travel site. Lastminute.com users gave similar responses but also mentioned low prices and eye-catching design as being important qualities in a travel site. Sidestep users were looking for plenty of options in a travel site, while Thomas Cook users sought comparisons of holidays.

Multilingual seekers aren’t Googlers

Nearly three quarters of those who thought multilingual was the most important quality in a site did not choose Google as their search engine of choice.

Frequent Googlers want eye-catching design

Oddly, those who were looking for eye-catching design were frequent Googlers (two-thirds). With Google’s reputation for simplistic design, this could suggest a market for those Googlers looking for more eye-catching options.

Spaniards take holidays in UK

Also interesting was that only one third of those who search the web in Spanish were planning their next holiday to Spain. The UK was second most mentioned as their next holiday destination, with Italy, China and Croatia also gaining mentions.

Face of Global Search short documentary

Over the course of the competition, Oban also produced a short video in which they conducted over interviews with international travellers from over 40 countries. The interviewees were asked how they researched their travel destinations.

Nearly every interviewee said that they used the internet to find information about, and frequently book, their holidays.

However, Oban did not get the answers it had anticipated. The ending reveals the paradoxical conclusion that emerged after a long day of interviews.
The video is available to watch at www.faceofglobalsearch.com.

Conclusions

Individuals are asked to conclude what they will from these results. However, Oban has its expert analysis to offer.

Analysis by Greig Holbrook, Director of Oban Multilingual:

What the results clearly show is that travel search is a very culturally diverse activity and that search plays a huge part in both the research and purchase of holidays for global travellers. The growth in Chinese on the web has been phenomenal and reflects the fact that over 900 million people on the web don’t speak English (around 70%).

Ninety-nine percent of those people who took part in the research indicated that they have booked travel online at some point. This once again reflects the fact that globally, people are becoming increasingly familiar with booking their travel online. This means that suppliers not only need to cater from them in their own language but also, as much as possible, allow them to buy successfully from the site. This means the sites need to be very well localised to reflect all search and online purchase behaviours.

Chinese travel searchers don’t seem to want to use Google, often preferring their own engines like Baidu much more. With the huge increase in Chinese searchers actually buying online in 2006-2007, it makes more sense than ever to make sure that optimisation for China is focused on local search engines.

It is not surprising that travellers going to different place are looking for different web features. International travel searchers are becoming more specific in their online behaviours so that in addition to multilingual web optimisation, global social media optimisation also needs to take place. In this context, a site properly optimised social media that is visible to a variety of cultures will prosper.

The finding that those who look for multilingual websites tend to avoid Google reflects the fact that international searchers are increasingly demanding good quality multilingual sites which are visible in their own search engines and not simply on Google, as Google is very often not the preferred engine or method for sourcing travel bookings.

In terms of Spanish people travelling to the UK, we have already found that travel sites often fail to provide good optimisation in Spanish for visitors who are seeking to visit the UK. Spanish people may use some English phrases to search or they may use Spanish, but very few travel sites provide them with the experience they need so they are often forced to use English sites. There is a great opportunity for travel companies to tap into the demand for travel from Spanish searchers; both for holidays within Spain and for travelling elsewhere like the UK.

Your business in Danglish

Growth business recently reported on Oban’s analysis of ‘Danglish’ as a useful language tool for targetting the vast potential market of internet surfers living in Denmark.

Every 15^th player to play the Face of Global Search game will win a bottle of champagne in addition to being entered into the original prize draw.

But hurry - there’s only six days left to throw your virtual suitcase around.

The game has players attempt to toss their suitcase to a portal which transports them to the next level in another part of the world.

Players are eligible to win either £150 or £100 worth of travel vouchers just for playing. Those who finish the game are eligible for the big prize - £250 worth of travel vouchers.

During the game, players are asked multiple choice questions about how they use the internet to book their holidays.

Those who are curious about what Oban has discovered as its database of answers matures should check out the video that they put together at the game’s website: www.faceofglobalsearch.com.

The competition ends July 23^rd.

European online retailers ready for language challenge

By Greig Holbrook

Recently The Retail Bulletin reported that many business websites are ill-equipped to deal with cross-border e-commerce.

This article looks at multilingual online retailing could help these businesses deal with this challenge, and even thrive.

Nearly two-thirds of European retailers say they are ready to carry out transactions in more than one language. However, only one third of EU consumers say they are willing to purchase goods and services in another language, according to the European Commission’s Eurobarometer report.

This means that the time is ripe for multilingual online retailing.

Many retailers choose not to sell their products in countries other than their own. For those who do, markets in other countries can provide additional welcome revenue streams. Overcoming language barriers is one of the key challenges to tapping into new international demand.

However, simply translating a website is not the answer to unlocking this potential. In order to rank well on that culture’s local search engines, sites much be optimised with the keywords that the consumers are most likely to associate with the product.

Keywords in other languages will be different from those in English. This means that the most popular English keyword for a particular product may not necessarily be so popular when translated into the target language.

Nappy retailers take note: german searchers use the term ‘kinder diaper’ for nappy, mixing both German and US English. Of note to tourism retailers: Indians use the term ‘LHR’ (London Heathrow) to look for destinations and information regarding the UK.
“Online retailers can simply be invisible to large numbers of potential customers if their websites are not optimised for particular search language and behaviour, says Greig Holbrook, Managing Director of Oban Multilingual, a specialist company focussing on international search engine optimisation. “They could be missing enormous sales opportunities as a result.”

It is also important to note that search behaviour differs in different countries. For example, Chinese people tend to search using ideas and concepts more than concrete phrases. Russian searchers will commonly type English sounds in Cyrillic. For example, “business travel” would often be written in Cyrillic but would sound English when pronounced phonetically.

Knowing the various forms of search behaviour in the target country helps solidify a cross-border internet marketing plan.

Multilingual SEO cannot create new markets; there must be a demand for the products or services on offer. And of course an online retailer has to be able to fulfil orders internationally. But global retail websites which are optimised for each market are key to success in capturing and maintaining new business in a globalising marketplace.

Travellers on Tape

Oban’s short documentary about online travel search behaviour surprised even them.

It’s their most visual endeavour to put a human face on global search. Oban Multilingual’s short video, filmed in England’s capital, captures international travellers at their most candid.

Oban conducted interviews with individuals from over 40 countries. The Oban team wanted to find out how the travellers were using the internet to search.

The team was surprised to have not found the answers they expected. But after a careful review of the footage, the light bulb went on.

The video is available to watch at www.faceofglobalsearch.com.

The ending reveals the paradoxical conclusion that emerged after a long day of interviews.

While you’re at the site, check out the Face of Global Search game. There’s only two weeks left to throw your virtual suitcase around to win prizes.

Make sure to play soon or you’ll miss out on the £250 travel voucher draw.

Hurry up and get your game on. There’s only two weeks left to throw your virtual suitcase around in Oban’s flash competition game.

The game has players attempt to toss their suitcase to a portal which transports them to the next level in another part of the world.

Players are eligible to win either £150 or £100 worth of travel vouchers just for playing. Those who finish the game are eligible for the big prize - £250 worth of travel vouchers.

During the game, players are asked multiple choice questions about how they use the internet to book their holidays.

Those who are curious about what Oban has discovered as its database of answers matures should check out the video that they put together at the game’s website: www.faceofglobalsearch.com.

The competition ends July 23rd.