Of all the world’s industries, travel and tourism is the sector that surely relies most heavily on translation and interpreting services. By its very nature, it is a profession that deals with multiple languages every day, which is why Language Insight has launched a new translation service especially tailored for it.

It may surprise you to learn that there are approximately 7,000 languages spoken across the planet. The vast majority of these (some 90 per cent) are spoken by fewer than 100,000 people. However, within the remaining ten per cent spoken by most of the world’s population, there are several languages to cover in order to cater to a wider audience. Tour operators, travel agencies and hotel owners who only promote themselves to English language customers are losing out on potential business from holidaymakers who speak Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, Hindi, Arabic, Russian, Bengali, Japanese, Portuguese, German, French and Italian.

In less than a century, the holiday industry has completely changed. Indeed, even in the 1980s and 90s, those able to take a regular holiday overseas were regarded as fortunate. In the last few decades though, all that has changed, thanks to the launch of low-cost airlines and the internet enabling tour operators to reduce their running costs.

While at one time hotel owners would have to rely on their printed marketing materials to drum up business, and work alongside travel agents to attract interest from holidaymakers, today they can advertise cheaply online and rely on recommendations posted by their own customers. In fact, it has never been easier for holiday accommodation owners to get themselves noticed by promoting themselves online, whether they own a hotel, bed and breakfast, guest house, holiday cottage, apartment, campsite or even a static caravan.

However, while promoting your tourism business has got easier, the competition has got greater. One way that tourism providers can really get themselves noticed and widen their audience, while leaving the competition standing, is to target more languages.

All over the planet, more people are now investing in international travel. To only promote your business in English means you are missing out. Tour operators and hotel owners based in the UK are wise to conduct market research to find out who their customer base is and then invest in translation services. For instance, if a hotel owner notices increasing numbers of Japanese tourists are checking in, translating their website into Japanese could help them generate even more business from this market. Meanwhile, travel companies that find some of their tours are particularly popular with Spanish-speaking tourists could translate their brochures and guidebooks into this language.

By doing this, businesses throughout the tourism sector can ensure they stand out from the competition. It’s also worth remembering that many customers will expect their tour operator to print their guidebooks, brochures and other materials in a range of languages as standard, so it’s worth taking steps to meet this expectation.

Language Insight provides translation services in almost every world language, along with interpreting services. Travel companies and tour operators can email us with their job specifications to register. After uploading their files to our Secure Client Portal, customers will receive regular updates from our skilled project coordinators, who will assign the files to the best translator for the job.

When selecting the right translator, Language Insight not only selects someone whose mother tongue is the customer’s target language, but who is also target language country-based and who has experience working in the tourism industry as a translator. This means that they will be fluent and up to date with the language, as well as experienced at translating the writing style used in tourism publications.

Language Insight offers several translation services that have been specifically tailored for certain industries, which you can check out here.