English language only advertising?

[Linnorton]

I'm trying to find out if gite owners find it worthwhile to have their websites available in languages other than English.  With a random search I can't find many English hosting sites that offer other language options but a search in French or Dutch does bring up multi-language sites. Is it worthwhile? Any opinions gratefully received.

[Clair]

I started off last year with just English, as all our advertising was addressed to the UK.

After registering with a multi-language website listing, I started receiving enquiries from Spain, Germany, Belgium and France and decided to add French pages to our (basic home-made) website.

I created a new front page, offering a choice of French or English version, with slighly different content (French people do not need to be advised how to drive in France (or do they?!) or which ferry company is available from which ferry port...)

My Spanish is too basic and my German inexistant, but I always reply to any enquiry in a foreign language by saying

" I do not speak ..... but I find http://babelfish.altavista.com/ helps me."

Then I reply in French or English and follow this by a babelfish translation of the same.

I have had no problem so far and have 2 Spanish bookings this summer.

[davcolDavid<br><a target=_blank href="http:www.francopats.com">www.francopats.com<a><br><a target=_blank href="http:www.flogit.ws">www.flogit.ws<a>]

[quote]I'm trying to find out if gite owners find it worthwhile to have their websites available in languages other than English. With a random search I can't find many English hosting sites that offer othe...[/quote]

I ran a holiday rental company in France for 15 years and we had our website (and Brochure) in English and French. In the early days we had over 40% French clients but this had been declining over the past 3 or 4 years with the increase in 'direct' marketing.

I think the ownly enquiries you would get from France in particular would be for the summer period when no doubt you have near 100% occupancy anyway.

However I must say they loved renting from an English agency and they were no trouble at all.

Good luck with the season.

[Linnorton]

Thank you both for replying.  The reason that I was asking is that my son is bi-lingual English-Dutch and daugher-in-law is Polish with fluent German.  I was idly wondered if it was worth them offering web-page translation to people who wanted to expand their offering for gites/b&b etc.  I think now that it's probably better to offer it direct to the agencies so that it could be offered as an extra to people signing up. I see an awful lot of Dutch cars around in Normandy during the year and a quick internet search in Dutch didn't bring up any English owned agencies.

[Fontremy]

What I would be interested in is a translation of key web search phrases in the different languages so that a google search in say German would bring up my site. I suppose I could use a dictionary but I'm not sure literal translations would be accurate compared to everyday language. Any volunteers? I would be willing to pay!

[winterbunny]

Whether it is worthwhile depends on your target audience.  A lot of owners aim their advertising specifically at English speakers. 

Our own site is in English but with a page in French to cover most of the information they would need.  A lot of French based directories will only accept a site if it is in French or at least has a French page; and at least one Dutch directory I've seen will only accept if the site has a Dutch translation, but they also insist the owners speak sufficient Dutch to communicate with clients.

I would bereluctant to put up a third or 4th language on the site as I couldn't follow up any inquiries in those languages.

Buns

 

[Pko]

I agree with winterbunny.

We have our website in 4 languages which we are able to speak and we found that if you provide te language on your website the guests expect they will be able to communicate in their prefered language.

So translating just the keywords might bring some awkward moments if you don't talk the talk.

Paul and Carin

www.lagrangevieille.com

 

[Owens88]

We have rented to many nationalities within our three years.

We are on French listings as well as brit as well as our own site. I would like that we had at least a french front page but ....

 

I do like the idea of

'a translation of key web search phrases in the different languages so that a google search in say German would bring up my site. .... Any volunteers? '

I might be prepared to share in the paying (GR, Dutch Scandinavian..).

John

[Quillan]

I to agree with Winterbunny.

Our website is in both French and English, the French part being a direct translation of the English. It is sad but true to say that unlike the French who simply refuse to learn English (well to some degree) most other nationalities consider it a second language. By this I mean Germans etc so they are fine.

As you can see from other threads the B&B's who take other nationalities often find them much nicer to deal with than the English. We did do an experiment with brochures and printed them in French, English, German, Italian and Spainish and placed them in the local tourist office, only the French and English were taken in about the same quantity. We do send out our confirmation letters and bills in all the above languages and also include Catalan as well, our booking software does this for us, it is a personal touch thing if you get my drift.

So I would say that if you want French people then get your website translated and get it registered on the .fr search engines I think you will find it will boost your income quite a bit, 70% of our guests are French. It's very good for improving your French by the way.

[Paolo]

'a translation of key web search phrases in the different languages so that a google search in say German would bring up my site. .... Any volunteers? '

This has been addressed in this thread at the Lay My Hat forum:

http://www.laymyhat.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=209

There are also a couple of Dutch phrases in there.

Paolo