If English is prevalent in most major markets, what’s the use of investing in a customized website translation that would offer the guest the chance to navigate in their native language?
For Viceroy Hotels and Resorts, the answer to that question came up most recently at its Viceroy Yas Abu Dhabi property, which first opened in 2009.
According to Thomas Wcislo, director of digital at Viceroy, the company’s Middle East properties (Yas, and the Viceroy Palm Jumeirah Dubai) had been pushing for years for an Arabic website to go after that market. And, in April, that request became reality.
“Connecting with those Arabic speakers, that’s really where the value is,” Wcislo said. “Even if you speak multiple languages, I feel it’s more comfortable for our user to actually be within their own language to understand what our product is and what we offer.”
Arabic is technically the official language of Abu Dhabi, the UAE’s capital, though English is also widely used in business transactions, according to the U.S. embassy.
There also might be another reason for investing in the language: in June, the Financial Times reported that Abu Dhabi-based fund Mubadala Development Co. was reportedly in talks with the U.S. Department of Justice for approval to buy the remaining 50% stake in Viceroy from Jho Low, a financier linked by prosecutors to Malaysia’s 1MDB corruption scandal. As of press time for HOTELS, Viceroy had no update on the state of that deal.
Initially, Viceroy considered going with a more basic, in-house driven translation option, but Wcislo ultimately pushed for the Florida-based MotionPoint, a tech company specializing in customized website translation.
According to MotionPoint executive Craig Witt, it’s not just the focus on another language, but really investing in the colloquialisms and culture that ring true with guests.
“Really, it’s localization where the dialect is specific,” Witt said. “Spanish for Spain is different than Spanish for Mexico versus Spanish for Puerto Rico. We’re seeing that the customer experience is very, very important to our hotel customers.”
Customization of search engine optimization and URLs, Witt says, is just as important as customization of more obvious things like captions on photos and the bulk of the site’s text. In one case, a MotionPoint customer had a 25% increase in traffic thanks to translating their URLs and the metadata associated with the translation.
In terms of concrete ROI, since April, when Viceroy Yas Abu Dhabi first launched its Arabic website, Wcislo said the property’s already seen a 3% to 5% increase in revenue and bookings.