Visit Florida : Something for all tastes

Content presentation is aligned with customer profiles to appeal across a range of visitor audiences.

The Site

The State of Florida’s “official” travel planning website has recently been relaunched in six languages, German, Spanish, French, Portuguese and American and British English. Each version is reportedly written or translated by native-speakers but the degree of localisation also extends to content.

Although all the versions work from the same overall menu of attractions and holiday options, the photographs and featured content varies. So, for example, while the home page for North Americans highlights the ACC Championship Road Tour car racing season, Best Beaches and Perfect Proposal (about “romantic” spots in which to propose marriage), Germans see a selection featuring Kunst-Safari (an art safari), Universal Orlando Resort (a theme park complex) and Naples/Marco Island, a beach resort. Furthermore, the home page selection changes each time the page is visited. Similar customised selectivity is used within sections of the site such as Attractions.

The Takeaway

Tourism is vital part to Florida’s economy so it is no surprise to see its official holiday planning site making a big effort to make international audiences feel at home on its website. But driven by the necessity, Visit Florida is being really quite inventive in its use of content as well as language to reach its target audiences.

Visit Florida has built up profiles of the tastes and preferences of different nationalities and translated this into content features that promote the corresponding delights from the tourist menu on the national versions of the site. The rotation of targeted content adds to the likelihood of it hitting the mark. Market research undoubtedly underpins the shaping the strategy and it would be surprising if web analytics – the statistics of website use – do not now play a part in helping to refine and further focus journeys on the site.

First published on 29 November, 2005