Babel Fish
Tuesday, March 18, 2008 @ 10:02 PM
Speaking of European clients I have been having a few enquiries from the French these last few days. In fact I managed to do an entire booking with the help of good old Babel Fish. Although I learnt French at school it seems that my brain can only cope with one foreign language at a time and since learning Spanish it has completely wiped out the French. The French lady does not speak any English, so now I have to find someone who can translate all my driving instructions into French because if she gets lost I will be no use to her! I am also going to translate all the apartment instructions - it will at least look like we have made an effort in making her feel welcome and she might return! I also managed to do an entire enquiry in Spanish although the client is a little nervous and wants to see a signed copy of the comprobante (I had to look this up – it is the bank receipt)
Some popular UK holiday sites will offer to promote your site on other European sites however sometimes there can be a charge for this. Still it would be better to find the top sites per country and sample them to see how many enquiries they bring in. I did try this with an Irish site last year – apartmentsdirect.ie - but to be honest I have only had one enquiry from them so will not renew the contract.
Well, back to the search engines…..