Tourism represents development opportunities, promotes solidarity and understanding beyond borders around the world, while domestic tourism also helps to foster cohesion within nations. The global success of the travel, tourism and hospitality industry can only be achieved if businesses manage to reach all customers, regardless of their native language. Hence translation plays a key role in ensuring the growth of this major sector in many countries economy.
Usually, tourism industry translation presents a diversity of challenges with two clear goals. The first one is to attract international travelers, while the second one is to make tourists feel welcome once they have arrived. In both cases, simple translations carried out by non-professionals or machine translation tools (like Google Translate) don’t suffice. Certain material must be adapted to not only overcome language barriers, but cultural barriers as well.
Unfortunately, COVID-19 has caused an unprecedented crisis for the tourism industry and the current situation surrounding the pandemic has led to a change in demand for translation-- a decrease for some major industries like these (Hospitality and Travel), meanwhile a massive boost for others, like e-Commerce and digital services.
But does that mean professional translation for the tourism industry is over while the pandemic continues? Not at all!
Even though non-essential travel has been brought to a half, not all the sector's activity has stopped. Many companies within the travel industry, for instance, are using this time to update some content and also to continue communicating with their customers, so this content still needs to be translated.
Why Effective Translation is Essential for the Tourism Industry after Covid-19
It is a matter of time for International travel to be reinstated, and one essential part of keeping travelers safe is still the accurate communication of safety measures, restrictions and new government guidelines surrounding the virus.
Along this year, for example, many hotels and restaurants have been ensuring guests were fully aware of social distancing measures, expectations for personal hygiene (hand sterilizing, the wearing of masks, and so on) and company policies regarding communal spaces.
If this information isn’t accurately translated by professionals, it is likely to create confusion among guests (and the possibility of increased risk of infection!)
The pandemic and its repercussions are set to last in the foreseeable future and to ensure travelers, guests, customers and staff stay safe, it is vital that those operating under the travel and tourism banner, offer accurate, expertly translated information in a variety of languages.
The need for professional translation is essential in every sector and business to avoid misunderstandings and to ensure effective and accurate communication. With Covid-19, the need for professional translation is even more serious. In this specific sector, for instance, ensuring that holidaymakers understand the laws, and follow the recommended guidelines, will be essential in avoiding further outbreaks of the virus, thus making translation not only pivital but
apart of the solution to curb the virus.
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