According to the definition, when a hotel owner (his name is Mr. Smith) opens a door to sell a room, the potential market of the hotel is the whole of the travelers visiting their area / destination It is a population. Depending on where the destination is located, the combination of languages spoken by these inbound tourists may be extremely limited (think about the Southwest Georgia Regional Airport in the USA). About 170 shipping companies operate in London and the majority are operating internationally).
Considering these lines, we are not only a hotel in the Greater London district, but also a hotel north / south circular shape located in the center of the city, behind the commercial necessity that we identify the potential customers of the product You are familiar with the city, in the traffic zone, and in the traffic jam zone.)
[Forthosewhoarenotwell-knowninLondonfromaculturalandlinguisticpointofviewitisaverylivelyintersectionofcultureandlanguage[ForthoseofyouthatarenotveryfamiliarwithLondonitwouldberelevanttomentionthatfromaculturalandlinguisticpointitisaveryvibrantintersectionofculturesandlanguages[ロンドンにはあまり知られていない人のためには、文化的および言語的な点から言えば、それは文化と言語の非常に活気のある交差点です。[ForthoseofyouthatarenotveryfamiliarwithLondonitwouldberelevanttomentionthatfromaculturalandlinguisticpointitisaveryvibrantintersectionofculturesandlanguages Like NYC, London boasts an extremely diverse international community. It is essentially a magnet for all types of tourists and visitors. ]
Our little experiment was to see a large part of the independent hotel market and to identify how these hotels look like "to follow" international visitors. Its purpose is to find out how many hotels correspond to different languages, and to find a general search from various countries (London & # 39; hotel & ("Boutique hotel & # 39; etc) and a completely specific search (called "named search" "The Cranley London hotel & # 39;).
I was expecting interesting data to come out. What we did not expect is that the vast major of the independent London City Center Hotel was not featured at all in international search!
The original intention to quickly accept an existing international hotel strategy (to assign value to it and compare it with the performance of the same language) was obviously not a beginner. The hotel in London can be very skillful (even cunning) to get the presence of search engines SEO and PPC in English search, but the ball seems to be dropped completely in the international market frequently .
All this is obvious. But in the name of distrust (I have learned a difficult way to ignore "obvious" things over the years in the hotel industry - always ask questions), we surveyed by some hotel owners I will give out the result. The main reasons for not having an international website are as follows.
- Cost of translating websites in multiple languages
- Cost to optimize website in multiple languages
- Lack of know-how
- Anyway belief that Google Translations will finish work
- I knew about it, I have not translated yet
- Because the agency has a business from abroad, there is no need to try the hotel more. (In the case of the hotel, it may be worrisome while reading this article)
Due to such reasons and never managed, the hotel does not seem to "chase" international foreign language business online. At the same time, the same hotel is to fight all teeth to attract English-speaking travelers' attention.
In the markets such as London (assuming that this is repeated in cities such as New York, Chicago, Miami, Paris, Munich), this imbalance shows interesting supply and demand trends.
[Iremindthehorriblegrandmotherwhoadvisedmehere:[Ifondlyrecallhereaformidablegrandmotherwhousedtoadviseme:'[私はアドバイスしてくれた恐ろしいおばあちゃんをここで思い出させる：[Ifondlyrecallhereaformidablegrandmotherwhousedtoadviseme:'If you heard of my boy, a cherry tree full of fruit, I always carry a small basket with you . It seems to me that the reverse is also true. ]
On the other hand, there is a demand for local accommodation from the international market - measured finite and proportional small scale (in most Western countries) quite accurately. On the other hand, the number of hotels that appear to be interested in the international business is decreasing in proportion.
It is somewhat worthwhile for me to point to certain characteristics here. But in order to get the idea of what I'm trying to make without giving it a name, consider five independent luxury hotels in London. Find out on Google and see if you can find the languages that are there ... Now they know that there are reasons for them - at least in fact they are on their website Cost may not directly need business directly. In some cases, if you want to stay in one of those hotels and come from Japan, you need to find this hotel via an agent and make a reservation. As a consumer, you may not mind at all. As a hotel owner, you should definitely keep in mind that it is your responsibility from an astronomical institution!
It is important to personally mention to me that the more suspicious statistics and "evidence" will increase as I research. But we must agree that the numbers we can afford are amazing opportunities for independent hotel owners as a whole international / multilateral market. In some cities with strong international demand, the hotel (literally) where you can speak a customer's language has the opportunity to attract international calls directly to your website. Please do not do the rest.
A number
Anyone who is interested in accessing international arrival trips to the UK can easily obtain it. One of my favorite sources is Visit Britain, frequently updating figures and implicitly reminding the size of international tourist opportunities. The latest up-to-date information on international tourism facts can be checked directly on the website, and we frequently use that data for investigation.
There are truly amazing ones in the cited numbers. Approximately 30 million visitors in 2010 are earning approximately 16.9 billion pounds. Despite the unusual disarray in the domestic and foreign markets since 2008, certain key performance indicators have hardly changed in the past four years. Half of the visitors (52%) were visiting London!
Language mosaic
It is inevitable that we live in a multicultural, multilingual world. The resulting complexity and inconsistent (and incompatible) patterns of consumer behavior between various international markets seriously complicates marketing for such international audiences . Ideally, the simple fact that we are trying to sell the same room to someone around the world is a potentially want to come to that area. here we go.
However, as it occurs well with a similar population, there are several demand patterns that can make our lives a little easier ...
- almost - 80/20 rule
Approximately 70% of all international visits in 2010 occurred from the top ten countries of origin (only 10% of countries with direct flights to the UK).
Also, not all visitors have the same way. The background of the trip (friends and relatives and business trip visits), the age of the visitor, the country of origin may themselves make a big difference to the suitability of a particular hotel traveler.
Furthermore, from a linguistic point of view, [and that with the exception of two English-speaking countries (USA and Australia) all other top 10 source countries (by volume) are within Europe] The complexity we face is too scary ...
Big Four
Looking at the table above, I make an assumption that all Dutch visitors speak English (I have not come across a Dutch person who I can not speak better than English yet), an international trip in the inbound UK. France, Germany, Spain, Italy. These four countries account for one-third of all international tourists who came to the UK in 2010!
Lost in translation?
According to eye4travel (2008), about 70% of all Internet users are not speaking English at all, or unpleasant when using it for trading ... this is obviously to everyone who has a computer and internet connection It is a reflected figure We have not thought that international travelers tend to speak English more than average users. However, the importance of language barriers can be clearly seen from that figure, 70% is a high figure in any language (forgive legends), even 60 to 50%.
Either way, I believe that hotel executives trying to increase direct traffic volume have two important questions.
1. "Do you think that overseas travelers understand it when visiting my site?
Before someone talks about Google Translations and talks about Google Translations and is at risk of giving an aneurysm (my translation tool is wonderfully useful), I will give you a more appropriate and logically precedent question I will do.
2. Do you think travelers from abroad can actually find you online? Do you have the opportunity to try and understand what you sell to them?
Even if it was only a small number of international immigrant travelers who did not speak English, I think you agree that you can not find the hotel's website first - it's a big problem!
If you are a hotel owner and reading this you may already have SEO and PPC on your website. There is also the possibility that we do not conduct SEO or PPC for potential customers such as Germany, France, Japan etc. Hilton, Marriot, and Decisively, Expedia, LastMinute, Bookings (Please see Google Screen Capture below)
Several discoveries
Considering the provision of language-specific multilingual presence products, with a few experiments, you can use multiple languages and IP locations to perform multiple searches from multiple countries for multiple types of hotels (In other words, look for hotels in the UK from abroad).
The result was truly fascinating. The problem revealed from a particular country (more clearly evident than other countries in the Netherlands) seems to be at the lowest point. In the search of the Netherlands, hotels were not mixed with international languages on the official website.
It seems that the full English-speaking Dutch ability has penetrated Google's algorithm. In many hotels, especially "narrow" searches, there was no problem on the first page.
In other extreme cases, there are no search results for independent hotels in countries where English is not the main language, or languages differ in alphabet (Japanese, Arabic, etc.) Absolutely . Even when looking for hotels with exact names and places, only the agency returned the results. Attractively, Bookings.com seemed to support the majority of the amazing results in the more ambiguous source market mainly through a very popular XML feed-based service.
No doubt the accessibility to the market to the hotel for many international languages is undoubtedly justified, at least in part. like this " Become an international traveler Adding more languages after offering the first few "top tiers" languages to consumers is not necessarily a financially good idea. Inbound After certain legitimate commercial decisions have been made to abandon them because certain countries that make up a small percentage of the UK whole market are too expensive for the benefits generated by this market.
You are most likely because you can not see the Expedia, Hotels.com, LastMinute etc. that are featured in the Google Greek search results above ...
So what do you do?
Some markets - I would like to discuss - no brainstorming! One third of international travel to London from France, Germany, Spain, Italy is just a part of the hotel's competitive hotel, statistically speaking, some actual results are obtained It should be a huge internationalization opportunity.
Thank you for reading - As usual, we are looking forward to hearing from you sincerely your opinion.
Yanis · Anastasakis
Electronic Hotelworks Director
