BedandBreakfast.com, a member of the HomeAway travel family, specializes in offering bed and breakfasts and inns around the globe, connecting travelers searching for interesting B&Bs with innkeepers showcasing their unique listings.
Bevin Morgan, Marketing Specialist for HomeAway, shared with us how she and her team planned and launched localized versions of the BedandBreakfast.com website.
Past, present and future
With two-thirds of their international members located in Europe, translation was a natural next step for this established travel company. The team wanted to find a way to communicate with innkeepers and grow business in both the US and Europe, two of their central markets. In 2009, they made their first international strides by localizing the site into Italian, French and Spanish.
More recently, after creating new localization processes, glossaries and style guides, Bevin and team launched the site in German. They decided to tackle the nuts and bolts of their website first, including core marketing and product web pages—from their homepage and sign-up flow to their innkeepers’ travel listings and dashboard. By translating small but significant areas that new users experience first, BedandBreakfast.com was able to quickly grow their membership following launch, noticing quick growth among German speakers.
Today, they’re taking their international work a step further by localizing user resources, including innkeeper tips and best practices, city guides, lifecycle emails and other content that aids in acquisition and improved communication with multilingual customers.
“Night and day”
Before using Gengo, BedandBreakfast.com relied on other translation companies for their projects. When one of their SEO team members introduced them to Gengo, however, Bevin, who handled the team’s translation vendor relationships, says the switch was “a night and day difference” all around. Not only did content quality improve, but they were able to get projects done much faster while cutting translation costs by over 50%, increasing the overall ROI of their international efforts.
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