The European Parliament in Brussels, with its maze-like corridors and cavernous chambers, is an astounding institution from which interactive travel could learn a lesson or two.
Forget for a moment the continental legislature’s toothless tiger status, which renders it all but powerless against the will of a national parliament, or its migratory nature (lawmakers spend a few weeks out of the month in Strasbourg, a few weeks in Brussels).
The EU figuratively is wrapped in red tape. But linguistically and culturally, the EU decisionmaking body is worth examining. Almost one-third of the union’s hired staff is interpreters who work inside glass-enclosed booths during sessions. All speeches are translated into 11 languages. When Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland join the EU, they’ll have 14.
Although the EU may go overboard, interactive travel often is so non-inclusive that it stands the same chance of prospering in an economically united Europe as mad cows on a French pasture. Based on an anecdotal survey of the leading American interactive travel providers, the problem could be summed up best as a coding crisis.
To the same extent the EU is trying to reach out to everyone, we’re shutting out the rest of the world. It’s going to cost us business soon.
Until this month, for instance, Microsoft’s dominant Expedia site didn’t accept bookings outside the United States. Now it generously takes orders from Canada, though not in French, to the dismay of our friends in Quebec. (Prices are listed in Canadian dollars, and technical support is available in both English and French.)
Whether you’re talking Web site, airline presence, or CRS, look for an abundance of English commands that tend to exclude large parts of the world’s population. Rare indeed is the bilingual booking address. One of the most effective reservations sites, FAO Business Travel Online, lets customers choose between English and German. Airhitch claims to offer instructions in French and Italian, although its booking features are quite primitive.
The widespread reliance on English is a symptom of a coding crisis. By that I mean that the bias goes deeper than the language used to communicate through online media. It seeps down to the programming, where users are excluded not only from reading information in their native languages but also from the basic right to type their proper name.
Most booking engines, for example, insist on a ZIP code when a user types in an address. Yet people in England don’t use our five-digit code in their addresses. When entering a name, what does one do with a surname like “Müller”? Does that become “Mueller” or “Muller” or even “name withheld”?
Considering that the Web was developed in Switzerland, it’s ironic that we’re having this discussion now. Why this is happening is obvious: America perfected the Web; it commercialized the Net. Yet the coding crisis is a very real issue that demands care and cultural sensitivity to correct the problem.
Adaptation is vital. The U.S. market for interactive travel will probably reach its saturation point sooner than anyone thinks, with only a finite number of modems, computers, and users capable of plugging in within our borders. Which means that your business will have to look for users outside the States, in places such as Belgium and Poland and China.
Maybe the European Parliament is inclusive to a fault. It bends backward for the smallest member state just as it would for the largest. Such flexibility isn’t necessary for a large interactive booking site or service. But some give and take is needed in the future.
As usual, the problem is easily defined but a solution isn’t. ASCII is a rigid set of characters used as a standard, and getting around that may be difficult. Language modules used to translate characters like “ø” and “é” are costly for the producer and consumer. Besides, how do monolingual programmers begin to understand a culture as complex and counter-intuitive as Russia’s, Lithuania’s, or Iran’s?
If the Web is truly worldwide, then we have to ask ourselves these difficult questions. Otherwise interactive travel won’t grow to its true potential. And neither will your company’s revenues.
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