With the Paris Olympics fast approaching, the city is already buzzing with anticipation. Set to take place on July 26 to August 11 for the Olympics and August 28 to September 8 for the Paralympics, an estimated 15 million visitors are expected to flood the city. For those of us in Paris, this summer is definitely going to be buzzing with excitement.

Of those 15 million visitors, an estimated 2 million will come from different countries. Summer in Paris is already teeming with tourists excited to explore the city’s magic—and the Games will bring in even more exciting business opportunities. We’re pretty sure that owners of bustling cafés and boutiques are busy preparing to welcome visitors with open arms and equally open cash registers as you read this!

The question is, how can entrepreneurs take advantage of this truly special time when they have the chance to cater to a diverse clientele? By translating and localizing their website, of course!

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How the Olympic Games Bring Exponential Growth Potential

The influx of millions of international visitors means endless opportunities for the country hosting the games and, of course, local businesses. But the challenge remains of communicating properly with tourists, especially those who don’t speak the same language.

Countries that have hosted the Games have made huge efforts to ensure clear communication between tourists and locals. A great example of this is the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, which was a milestone in Japan’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusivity initiatives and linguistic expansion.

In a country where less than 8% of the population, with as few as possibly 2% speaking English fluently, catering to a largely English-speaking international audience was definitely difficult. But the Japanese aren’t new to the challenge; they hosted the Games in 1964, where organizers were more creative about overcoming the linguistic barrier.

Knowing that most visitors do not understand Japanese, designers Masasa Katzumie and Yoshiro Yamashita developed a system of pictograms that conveyed each participating sport and depicted common amenities. Visitors of all cultural backgrounds easily understood the pictograms, making them a huge success.

In fact, they were so effective that some are still widely used today. You’ve likely seen some of them–such as the doors marking public toilets, for example.

Why Tourism Can’t Survive Without Websites

Long gone are the days of navigating by using a massive map and asking around for directions. These days, it’s expected to find all the information you need online, whether you’re looking for accommodation, restaurant recommendations, or tips to get around your destination.

Think of search results like an old-time bulletin board: each website is a flyer pinned, containing practical information that tourists would find useful. Visitors, especially those not speaking the local language and who are foreign to the place, would immediately consult this. With all the information in one place, it gives the assurance that they can easily get around the area and find what they’re looking for.

Websites contain all the details that would help visitors plan their trip: the best times to visit, where to find you, what you offer, and so on. In fact, these very websites massively influence visitors’ decisions—and where they decide to spend their money.

If tourists don’t have access to such information, they’ll be less inclined to travel and explore new places. Naturally, this will severely harm the tourism industry.

But there’s a catch: if your website is only available in the local language, tourists won’t understand what you can do for them. This will prevent you from expanding your business to people from all over the world. Even worse, you’ll lag behind your competitors—especially those that have made their website content available in multiple languages.

However, simply stuffing your website with information isn’t enough. Ensuring a smooth user experience is a critical factor in website engagement. A clean homepage, a clear navigation menu, and limiting interstitial content (like popups) are some ways to provide an enjoyable browsing experience for your potential customers.

Examples of Businesses or Organizations Who Have Translated Their Websites

Now let’s take a look at how businesses have catered to all visitors and spectators, regardless of native language:

Loire Montgolfières - Hot Air Balloon Flights in the Loire Valley

You may have heard of the verdant Loire Valley with its storied castles. But Loire Montgolfières offers a new way to explore the valley and make it a truly unforgettable adventure—through hot-air balloon rides.

Visitors have a choice of taking off from several different places within the valley: Chenonceau, Amboise, Chaumont sur Loire, Chambord, and more. The trips come with a flight certificate and free in-flight photos, plus you can also embark on cellar tours for the full experience.

As the Loire Valley is a popular tourist destination, it made sense for the business to cater to as many visitors as possible by adding 3 more languages to their website using Weglot. Even the hot air balloon pilots are multilingual, speaking both French and English!

Lutetia Paris - The Boutique

This ritzy hotel, known as the ‘Palace of the Left Bank’, is situated in the famous Saint-Germain-des-Prés in Paris. This hotel isn't just about luxury; it's about an experience fit for royalty.

And you can see this in their boutique, which sells a range of carefully selected products inspired by the hotel. Whether you want your home to smell like the hotel through the Lutetia-scented candle or indulge in chocolates that bear a striking resemblance to Lutetia’s mascot LuLu, a Shar-Pei puppy, the boutique definitely has something that will catch your eye.

As the hotel and boutique are in the heart of one of Paris’ most famous areas, most of their clientele are international, and thus speak a language other than French. So they translated the boutique website using Weglot to ensure that all curious onlookers can understand the curated products they have available.

Hotel Villa M

A stunning scientist-themed hotel tucked away at the border of the 15th and 7th arrondissements of Paris, Villa M offers a tranquil escape in the middle of the city through a beautiful roof terrace with fruit trees, a planted garden, and spacious rooms. In fact, the terrace offers a gorgeous view of the city, including the Eiffel Tower.

Naturally, their guests speak a range of languages—and thus, so do their staff. So it made sense for them to translate their website using Weglot into English alongside French.

How to Translate Your Website in Time for the Olympics

With the Olympic Games only a few months away, you might think that you don’t have enough time to prepare or even redo your website for the surge of tourists that will be rushing into the city.

But we’ve got good news for you—there’s no need to do any of that.

Weglot can automatically translate your entire website in a few minutes, making it Olympic ready in the time it takes to make your morning cup of coffee. Supporting over 110 languages (and custom languages too), it generates a first layer of machine translation from top providers DeepL, Google Translate, and Microsoft Translator. The provider it uses depends on your language pairing, ensuring the most accurate translation possible from the get-go.

Integration is also super easy and stress-free. Weglot is CMS-agnostic, so it works with any website without the help of a developer. All you have to do is create a Weglot account, take your designated API key or code snippet, and copy-paste it into the appropriate field in your back-end.

Weglot also gives you more visibility all around—just ask the more than 70,000 websites that used it to translate their websites. For instance, REVIEWS.io saw a 120% increase in German traffic and a hefty 20% increase in conversion rate—all from adding only one language to their site.

After adding 12 languages to their website, NCR saw 1-2 million monthly website visits. Volant saw a 2.4x increase in online visits and a 39% jump in international revenue after using Weglot to launch in 11 new markets within a month.

If you want to refine the automatic translations for more specificity and clarity, you have two options: the translations list or the Visual Editor, which allows you to edit translations in-context, real-time.

And if you want certain words to remain in the original language, like your brand name or products, simply use the Translations Exclusions feature.

Lastly, Weglot follows multilingual SEO best practices set by Google. You have the choice of hosting your language versions under subdomains or subdirectories. And, Weglot automatically adds attributes like hreflang tags so that search engines will recognize the translated versions as separate content from your original website instead of duplicates.

Basically, Weglot is built to keep the manual work of website translation to a minimum—but it also gives you intuitive tools to fine-tune everything as you wish.

Maximize Your Olympic Potential: Translate Your Website Today with Weglot

The 2024 Olympics present a truly unique opportunity for entrepreneurs in France. As one of the largest international events in the world, there may not be another chance to charm so many foreigners in one fell swoop. Whether you’re ready to go all-in on website translation or you’re still wondering if it’s worth it, Weglot makes it easy to reach your potential clients faster—no matter what language they speak.

Plus, the benefits don’t stop once the Olympics are done. When more people know who you are and what you have to offer in their own language, they’re more likely to come back and engage with you. Plus, there’s a big chance this trip to Paris won’t be their last. 😉

Sign up for your 10-day free trial to find out just how easy it is to go multilingual with Weglot.