Global Travel Trends Impact Localization and Translation
In the global travel and hospitality community there are always rising and falling trends. Some travel destinations are hot, some are not. Keeping an eye on where travelers are coming from and going to is essential for longevity and financial success in the online travel and hospitality industry. For travel organizations to maximize revenue growth, it is important to keep up with these trends and continue to adapt content to meeting growing local markets.
Welocalize takes a look at some of the big trends in global travel and how that can have an effect on language demand and your localization strategy.
CHINA — The Asian travel and hospitality market is blowing up! According to the EyeforTravel Half-Year Round-Up and Forecast 2015, there were 62 million Chinese who traveled abroad in the first half of the year — a rise of 13%.
Making sure your content is localized in certain Asian languages is going to be essential to keep up with the demand. With this rise in Chinese travelers, savvy businesses will know that to tap into this lucrative market, they will need customer-centric translation and localization solutions in Chinese languages. However, China being the most populous country in the world, there is no ‘one’ Chinese language. Simply translating content into one of the languages spoken in China will not be enough to reach a significant amount of the population.
Shanghai is the most populous city in China and the third biggest in the world with almost 23 million inhabitants. It is the global financial center of China and a global transport hub. Although the official language of China is Mandarin, the vernacular language of Shanghai is the Wu language, which is virtually unintelligible with Mandarin. It is certainly worth localizing your content in these two Chinese languages, as it could maximize your reach in the Chinese market.
MOBILE in INDIA — Mobile apps are often reported to be a big travel trend in 2015. When keeping up with geographical targets, it is important consider in what format target customers like to view content. The Indian travel market seems to be ‘hotting up’ in relation to mobile. The same EyeforTravel report claimed that there has been a 77% year-on-year growth in the number of app sessions in Asia. Localization and translation media Slator, recently report that the IAMAI predicted that by 2016, there will be 236 million mobile users in India. The demand is high for mobile and content localization.
Similar to China, India also has a multitude of spoken languages. Working with an experienced language services provider (LSP) can help you decide which languages to use to obtain maximum reach in your target country. An LSP can also make sure that mobile apps can support the characters with languages such as Hindu or Punjabi.
USA — The US also has encouraging mobile figures with mobile commerce sales (including travel) showing a boost to $31 million this year according to the eMarketer Brief: Digital Insights for the Travel and Hospitality Industry. With the US leisure travel market totaling $644.9 million, as reported by the US Travel Association, it is definitely worth keeping up with the trends from this market.
The US also has a growing Hispanic population. Of the $644.9 million spent on leisure travel, US Hispanics represent more than $56 million. Hispanics represent 17% of the US total population. In 2013, Spanish was the most spoken non-English language in the US, used by 35.8 million Hispanics in the US. Although English is the official language of the States, translating and localizing your content into Spanish is definitely worthwhile to capture a further language reach. This is also impacting the need for the travel and hospitality markets to think about how to engage with their consumer from abroad in the local and their preferred native language.
Localizing for growing and emerging markets is key for any company in the online travel and hospitality sector. Working with a language services provider that has reputable and proven experience working with global travel and tourism brands is essential. Welocalize ensures that your business is ready to meet the demands for any future travel and hospitality trends.
