Can my customers book on my website in their own language, or does it only work in English?

Yes, a customer facing booking portal can be shown in more than one language, so a visitor can search, choose and pay without reading English. The parts of the site that belong to you, such as the menus, buttons, search labels, checkout wording, your home page text, your terms and your confirmation emails, can each be stored in several languages, and the site picks the right one based on what the visitor chooses or what their browser asks for. Most agencies start with English plus the one or two languages their market actually uses, and add more later.

Where you need to be realistic is the content that does not come from you. Hotel descriptions, room names, facility lists, fare rules, baggage conditions and cancellation policies all arrive from the supplier through the connection, and most suppliers send them in English only. Some send a few extra languages, some send none. Where a supplier does offer translations, the portal can request them and show them. Where it does not, you are left with either the English text or an automatic translation, and automatic translation can read badly on policy and cancellation wording, so many agencies choose to leave those lines in the original language rather than risk a confusing promise.

A couple of other steps sit outside the portal too. The payment page may be hosted by your payment provider and will follow the languages that provider supports, and any voucher or ticket issued directly by an airline or hotel comes in whatever language they produce. How many languages you can switch on, and whether the translation work is yours or ours, also depends on the plan you are on.

The useful next step is to decide which languages your real customers need, then ask us which of those your chosen suppliers can return content in, so you know up front which pages you will be writing yourself.