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Marketing Across Borders: Benefits of Translating Your Vacation Rental Website

Illustration of TranslationThe vacation rental industry is booming! The increased ease and cost-effectiveness of long-distance travel, coupled with the fact that the vacation rental industry growth outpaced the hotel industry by 27% in 2012, means your international client pool is growing. To effectively make use of this growth, it is imperative that you look into marketing your properties internationally. Most importantly you need to be able to communicate with international clients through your website.

Why Translate Your Website?

Let’s say you are a vacation rental agency in Barcelona, based on the tourist volume statistics, the top markets you cater to are from France, Italy, Germany, US and the UK. That’s a lot of clients speaking a lot of different languages. Yes, English is the primary international language, but there is a large volume of tourists who do not speak English.

Translating your website into the languages of your top markets can provide you with valuable business opportunities:

Increase Traffic To Your Website from Search Engines:

A large number of tourists find their vacation rentals through search engines.  If you are from France, you will most likely be more comfortable searching in French than English when gathering information. If your website is only in English, search engines will bypass your website to present a French website to the potential client.

You have already spent money and time creating an English website, why miss out on a large portion of your market due to language barriers?

Improve Customer Experience on your Website:

Your website is a direct reflection of your brand image. A professional website with information-rich content will convey a trusting and professional image. This trust comes in handy when clients are debating the security of placing their payment information into your website.

Adding numerous language options to your website will increase the trust you have between you and the potential client. Being able to read the description of the apartment, understanding what the payment includes and accepting the terms of the apartment rental, affects whether the client will book with your agency or another who has content in their native language.

Tips for Translating your Vacation Rental Website:

Overcome Technical Issues:

One of biggest challenges to overcome when translating a website is dealing with the technical requirements of adding another language to your website.  Vacation Rental Software providers such as Kigo, offer options for adding numerous different languages to your website. This way, even if you have no technical knowledge you can manage and modify numerous translations on your website.

Outsource Translations Overseas:

Money may also be an issue when you are planning on translating your website. With a growing market demand for website translations, there are numerous quality translation service providers available at your disposal. You can hand over the whole translation work to a professional translation agency, or you can save some money by making use of qualified free-lance translators.

Cover the Bare Minimum

If you know you need your website in numerous languages, but you are currently buried in too much work to takeover such a project, cover the bare minimum:

Portal Property Descriptions: If you are using a channel manager portal such as Airbnb, make sure you have your property descriptions in numerous languages.

Website Property Descriptions: Dig into your past property analytics to see the main countries your visitors come from. Pick the top 3, and have property descriptions available in those three languages. You can do this by using the same page and adding extra paragraphs for different languages. Don’t overcrowd your page: only cover 2-3 main languages.

Do you have your vacation rental website in numerous languages? Have you seen an increase in traffic to your website as a result of translating your website? Join the conversation by commenting below!

If you are in the market for a new multilingual vacation rental website or better vacation rental software to manage your inquiries, bookings and marketing, consider using Kigo. You can reach us at [email protected] or on the phone (Spain) +34 512 702 105 ‧ (France) +33 1 84 17 04 18 ‧ (USA) +1 (786) 292-0030

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