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It’s easy to tell if your hospitality tech copy was machine translated. You are a specialized media and publish news about the industry, your company operates in hospitality technology and as a tech-savvy team, you obviously chose technology to transpose your content into French as you wish to scale in France. You might have thought: it’s fast, it’s cheap, the output is good enough so that our prospects and clients will understand. We don’t need top notch quality, the product and the features are more important. Adopting AI or machine translation tools for your website or marketing is tempting because you believe it reduces costs and shortens time to market but in reality that’s not really true. This choice can also generates hidden costs in money and time. Your brand image and authority could also be impacted. Let’s see why and how in this article.

1 Inadequate hospitality tech copy

1. The guest who was not invited

You certainly all know the definition but here’s the reminder, just in case: a guest is a person who is invited to visit someone’s home or to attend a particular social occasion. It’s a visitor who does not pay to come to your place or gathering.You welcome him/her for free, ie Average Daily Rate = 0€. The kind of guest hoteliers don’t want to attract in their property.

There’s a second meaning that hospitality professionals all know: a guest is also a person staying at a hotel, a holiday rental, or a guest house. That person pays a specific price to stay at your accommodation. In hotels, they’re called « clients », in vacation rentals industry they are « vacanciers », in the short-term rental world we can call them « voyageurs » in French.

Imagine if hotels or vacation rentals had “invités” (translation into French) in their properties, as people love free stuff, they’d certainly boost their occupancy and that’s one of the goals of your prospects and clients.

However these accommodations would definitely not increase their RevPAR nor their revenue as their ADR would be of 0€. No need for a revenue manager to draw this conclusion. As explained in the definition above, “invité” refers to a visitor who was invited to a place or a gathering. It means the person staying at the hotel does not pay for the room.

Hoteliers could unlock ancillary revenue but it would not be enough to compensate for the main loss of revenue. These « guests » or « invités » could also expect more free services if the main one is. Maybe at your restaurant?

In machine translated hospitality copy, the first meaning of « guest » is considered, not the second one, which is the correct one. Before explaining why, let’s study another example.

2 A PMS becomes a premenstrual syndrome

I’ve seen it several times and the funniest example is when it is included in a sentence with the name of the brand. For example “Mews is more than a PMS.” And I’ve seen worse (translated brand names) check part 3 below. This output is very common with tools like DeepL. It also appears in localization tools, like Crowdin that integrate DeepL and AI suggestions. I tell you more about the use of DeepL for marketing content in this article. 

What is a PMS? This abbreviation refers to a group of physical and emotional symptoms women experience and that start one to two weeks before their period.

A second meaning is an acronym in the hospitality technology: Property Management System. Système de gestion hôtelière, système de gestion immobilière according to your niche.

If you edit machine output inhouse, spotting then correcting the error will represent a cost and loss of time for your team who has more important tasks to fulfill. It would even be more efficient to rewrite as your team of experts would definitely not have done this terrible mistake.

Now let’s see the third error.

3 Brand names 

You also find brand names translated, like Écuries for Mews, Lit de nuages for Cloudbeds (read in a famous media article). The result can be funny or weird according to the sentence itself or the context.

And the hilarious part is that this weird name is found in titles. Then in the paragraph, the right original brand name is intact. What happened? Why this inconsistency? We’ll study that below in the following part.

For sure, your brand deserves to appear in titles too right? Especially for SEO matter. So choose a brand guardian, who will make sure you’re well named in every content.

4 Unlock revenue becomes « débloquer des revenus »

« Débloquer » would be correct in the field of a video game « débloquer un niveau » but hospitality is not a game. The expression is also used in banking field « débloquer des fonds » usually in real estate transfers, when a house is sold for example. But it implies the money is there and an action is necessary so that it becomes available.

Unlocking revenue refers to a potential revenue. The money does not materially exists and the hotelier has to create ways to make it real. « Activer » or « révéler un potentiel » would be more idiomatic in French. But only a skilled linguist or an expert of your field can craft this message. A tool is not able to spot subtleties

2 The reasons and the consequences

• Statistics and proabilities

Remember our first errors like « invités » for guests or « syndrome prémenstruel » for PMS?

Just a quick explanation. Here we have an example of how machine translation understands the first meaning of a word, but does not consider the second meaning. It does not take into account the context to make the difference. Why? It works on statistics. The probability in French that guests will mean “invité” is higher than “clients”, probably because the word “clients” exists in both languages.

Your prospects will understand the real meaning behind this error. I doubt they don’t. Nevertheless, do you think this error that anyone can spot would be a positive sign for your brand image? Should your prospects make this effort to understand that the word used is not the right one and that they have to replace it by the correct one? I’m unsure it reveals the sense of hospitality, if you know what I mean. Your client is not the one supposed to do the effort, you’re offering the solution and you’re not supposed to create friction in between.

The direct cost here is that this term will definitely have to be updated when written in its full form. It is a huge context error. Let’s see the consequences.

• The impact

Will your prospects and clients take you seriously for this carelessness? Don’t you think it damages your credibility and is it the brand image that you wish to convey? I’m sure you have an idea here, entrusting your strategic content to a tool will have an impact on your long term credibility. You will definitely lose sales as your prospects will have a bad perception of your solution and product.

They could wonder if this type of error will be found in the product itself. What if the solution is not efficient? What if I don’t understand how it works? Will there be someone to help? Is there a written guide and what would be the quality of this paramount content?

And newly acquired clients could be disappointed if they discovered that the product itself or the help content also includes this error. If your guide and help content contains the same errors, retention will be impacted. Acquisition efforts will be lost because of your message.

If the  machine output is edited inhouse by non dedicated staff, spotting then correcting the error will represent a cost and loss of time for your team who has more important tasks to fulfill. It would even be more efficient to rewrite.

Small words big impact in hospitality tech copy

We’ve seen in this article the frequent errors produced by machine to your content when you entrust your marketing content to an AI or automatic translation tool. Some of you correct and edit the output inhouse, and you’re absolutely right to check and process the content as a machine output should never be published without a keen eye for detail. For the sake of your brand. But be aware that there are more efficient workflows. An option that looks cheaper and faster at first sight might become costly and postpone time to market. And if you need help Elowords is here. Thanks to my background in hospitality, technology and languages, I’m able to craft conversion-ready copy that will speak the language of your prospects and clients. Your message will be market fit and contribute to your credibility. Are you ready?

Written by Elodie Le Douarin