There are literally thousands of hotels in Greece that need their websites localized, usually into Greek, English, German and French, but also into other, less common languages. Having a hotel website that is localized well can be a make-or-break factor, as content that is accurate and well-presented will entice more customers. In contrast, poorly presented web pages with linguistic and factual errors will have the opposite effect.
Besides individual hotels, there are loads of online travel agencies (OTAs) with their own translation needs: Their content can range from user interface (UI) and marketing to legal (e.g., terms and conditions), etc., usually also taking into account SEO (search engine optimization) and SEM (search engine marketing) considerations. The localization of such content is fast-paced, as there are daily content updates, and many times there are extra challenges, such as character limitations and lack of context.
Another challenge is the localization of place names, points of interest (POIs), names of people, hotel names and addresses, etc. Especially in the case of large OTAs, we might be asked to localize place names and POIs from all over the world, such as China, Egypt, Latin America, etc.: How do you go about transcribing Egyptian place names into the target language alphabet when they have already been transcribed from the Arabic alphabet into the Latin alphabet?
And then, the travel sector has more creative content that needs to be translated. Destination descriptions are quite common, e.g., a description of Athens and its main monuments, as potential tourists want to have an idea of the place they are considering visiting. Hence, such descriptions must be enticing and colorful, as well as factually accurate. It is more transcreation than mere translation.
