ROTANA, the leading hotel management company in the Middle East and Africa, has announced that guests in key markets will now be able to access information on its website rotana.com in five languages in addition to English, in a move that is expected to greatly further Rotana’s international reach.
With 49 per cent occupancy growth in the wider Middle East in 2012, Rotana felt the time was right to invest in building its Arabic online offering. The site has also been translated into four other languages based on Rotana’s key source markets.The Dh2.5-million ($600,000) translation project makes all content – including booking capabilities – available in Arabic, Chinese, Spanish, German and Russian. Native speakers of these five languages will now be able to browse information on Rotana’s extensive hotel portfolio, destination tips on places where Rotana operates, in addition to booking directly online.“The choice of languages at rotana.com is driven by our existing clientele and key growth markets. An Arabic-enabled site allows us to better serve our home market in the GCC and the wider Arab region and is key to our growth strategy in GCC, where we have 35 properties in operation and another 22 in the pipeline,” says Omer Kaddouri, executive vice president and COO of Rotana. “Russian and German were two other languages that warranted translation as Russia, the CIS markets and Germany are important source markets. Moreover, with Chinese speakers making up 14 per cent of the world’s population and Spanish speakers at close to six per cent, these two languages offered us the greatest ROI in terms of penetration into important growth markets.” Rotana recently launched a mobile app that allows guests to browse and book through their smartphones, as well as a “click-to-call” live customer service accessible over wi-fi or 3G.