How to Break Down Language and Cultural Barriers in Tourism

Are you looking to break down language and cultural barriers in tourism? At Listen Technologies, we specialize in breaking down barriers, and it’s a topic that is getting more attention in management meetings and board rooms. Being able to meet the needs of foreign language travelers means more revenue, more market share, and more tickets sold. But do broken barriers include everyone?

Begin With Key Foreign Language Markets

Having foreign languages as part of your sightseeing tour product offering is an important consideration. This is why foreign language travelers will choose you over someone else. When you have foreign languages, people are more likely to purchase your tickets.

When we’re speaking with tourism organizations about breaking down language barriers, we are always making recommendations with regards to key foreign-language markets. More than half of the sightseeing companies we speak to want to launch their foreign language products in 6, 8, 10, 15 and our most recent request; in 30 languages.

While we respect and admire the enthusiasm of our customers and their determination to break down language and cultural barriers, we have to ask; when the languages are there, how are they going to be supported, marketed, and sold?

We encourage our customers to evaluate their local market to gain a better understanding of how many foreign language travelers are arriving in their destination and from where. If your key foreign language market opportunities means catering to the needs of Japanese, Mandarin, German and Spanish travelers, why produce Korean?

If you are considering multilingual tours, we recommend that you focus on meeting the needs of your top foreign-language markets initially. This will ensure that your initial investment in your tour commentaries solves problems for the majority of travelers arriving in your destination from around the corner or from around the globe.

After implementing their new languages, many of our clients are doing extraordinary work tapping into local and regional foreign language markets by marketing and selling their foreign language tour products to short-haul drive markets.

By meeting the market demands for foreign language tour products, you can then produce additional languages for emerging markets as the next natural step in your product strategy.

Foreign Language Local and Regional Markets

With additional languages, there are many opportunities to increase your foreign language tour business in local and regional markets. The first step is to identify and speak with local community influencers in the foreign language markets you service. Exchange ideas and learn more about your local markets. You’ll receive valuable information about how to effectively reach and communicate with your target markets while building meaningful relationships in your community. But what can you do to benefit from focusing on local and regional foreign language markets?

• Build market awareness by working with key gateway partners in your destination such as bus and local transit companies, train stations, and airports
• Coordinate and deliver cross-promotional partnerships and programs with local businesses in a variety of industry sectors.
• Identify, target, and partner with foreign language hotels, innkeepers, bed and breakfast owners, and restaurants in the foreign language markets you serve.
• You can increase domestic business by consistently building regional and local awareness programs. Offer foreign language clubs and organizations incentives to purchase tickets to attract the visiting friends and relatives market. Create and provide print collateral in the language markets your serve.
• Research the number of foreign-language media outlets within driving distance to your business; you may be surprised to find that dozens of language-specific publications, newspapers, radio stations, and cable TV stations are located within your reach and may represent an opportunity to share your story

The successful outcome of your marketing efforts requires your sales, marketing, and operations departments to be working together in unison to achieve a common vision – to break down barriers and to build local and regional programs and partnerships to increase business and profits. To achieve this goal, your team needs to be working on a number of fronts to build awareness of your multilingual tour products. Contact us today to discuss how we can help you break down barriers.