Steve Lowy, CEO of Umi Digital in London has lived around the world and owns multiple businesses in the hospitality industry – in real estate and Academic offerings including Academic Program creation, Internship Sourcing & Management, Educational Tours and Academic Programming. After successfully growing these services through digital marketing, he launched a marketing agency focused on growing hospitality businesses. 

In this episode of the Global Marketing Show, I talk to him about how he leverages his experience in global digital marketing to help other hospitality organizations. It’s exciting to hear as he says on his LinkedIn profile -  “I love empowering the underdogs to fight above their weight especially as the hospitality space gets cluttered with big brands.” 

His advice on the show is insightful for hospitality organizations looking to increase patronage with local and international guests. 

With a passion for eating and international travel, Steve studied hospitality in university in England and then lived in Australia, the S. Pacific, and the USA.  At age 24, he managed a 500 bed backpackers hostel and got great experience so he could buy and run his own hotels. 

As soon as he started running his own in London, Brighton, and Moscow, he learned the importance of the digital brand for both attracting visitor and allowing online booking.  As others in the industry saw his success, he realized that he spent a lot of time educating others in hospitality about how to use digital media. Instead of consulting for free, he saw the opportunity to monetize the education and provide services to support smaller properties and organizations with growing through digital marketing. 

During the conversation – I had to ask why he founded a hotel in Moscow in 2009 – he hadn’t lived there or had experience.  Steve explained that it was an opportunity – some friends asked him to help them open the hotel.  He saw a great opportunity as at that time, there were not many western style hotels close to the Red Square in Moscow.  Mostly there were communist style hotels or a few western ones for about $1,000 a night.  

Language was challenging since at the time there were not the tools to support their efforts and their buyers were not Russians, but international travelers.  In addition, they had to capture the cultural differences of staying at a hotel – like having food accessible. 

He does see a shift in the industry with how language is used as organizations shift more to video and visuals.  Less written content is being used and depending on your buyer – it may make sense to have translated subtitles or additional translated content. We talked about how important it is to understand the buyer’s journey to determine where and how translation should be used.  

Some challenges that organizations face now are the following: 

• Drop offs in reservation stage if the third-party booking partner does not translate the reservation platform. The buyer may find the site, read all material, decide to book in their native language, but when they click through to book, it’s in another language. This causes them to move on and not book. 

• Untranslated search terms that buyers may use. For example, if Steve optimizes his site for “London” and visitors search “Londres”, the buyers won’t find him.  The flow from search, through the website to booking and confirmation must be consistent. 
• Not understanding your buyer’s needs – if your ideal customer profile is a business traveler that needs to be close to their meeting site, less content and thus translation will be needed.  Yet, if you run a luxury resort, the customer will expect more interaction in their native language. It’s not transactional, it’s capturing the dream of the perfect vacation. 
• Determining your price point – consumers desiring a cheap stay will be more forgiving of no translation. Higher priced hospitality providers must provide in language support. They are expecting full service. 

To give you an understanding of the importance of translation Booking.com (or Priceline.com in some countries) had 500-1000 translators working on their content.  They know that good quality translation offers higher accessibility which results in a better quality score which circles back to more bookings. 

Steve discusses how the last couple years have been extremely rough on the hospitality industry with customer expectations increasing, inflation, difficulty in hiring and retaining and wage increases. And that marketing and training are the first budgets to be cut.  Yet it’s the marketing that will increase sales. Rather than looking at marketing and translation as a cost, try looking at the ROI (return on the investment) that you can get from attracting new customers. 

In London, traditionally he’s translated content into English for the US, French, Spanish and German. Now they are expanding into Chinese – which means for his buyer’s journey they will need translation for : SEO, website, booking, menus, on site information, and staff to speak the language(s). This is a global marketing expansion area for him. 

His final recommendations – as he learned in sports – it’s not the big one time gains, it’s the marginal gains that make a difference.  Don’t be scared and look for those marginal gains.   

Links: 

Connect with Wendy - https://www.linkedin.com/in/wendypease/ 

Connect with Steve - https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevelowy/ 

https://umidigital.co.uk/ 

Music: Fiddle-De-Dee by Shane Ivers -https://www.silvermansound.com