IHG: Delivering a personal touch across 5,600 hotels

IHG overview

In the service-driven hospitality industry, consistently delivering a personalized message is the foundation for building an impactful guest experience. This goes beyond delivering content in the guest’s native language; it’s about integrating regional preferences and curating a memorable digital experience that gives companies a critical advantage

The challenge

For InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), this localization effort was easier said than done. The company does business in 16 languages across more than 100 countries with a portfolio of 15 brands and 5,600 hotels. In addition, IHG has a complex landscape of guest technologies, including web and mobile booking platforms, and an advanced content management system that publishes dedicated websites with engaging content for each hotel.

This complexity was putting IHG at risk of missing deadlines for launching new languages and publishing new content in existing languages by weeks or months. IHG’s developers were also spending an increasing amount of time maintaining local language content instead of further advancing the Guest Journey.

The solution

Smartling's integration with Adobe Experience Manager proved beneficial for IHG, offering increased visibility into the translation process, enhanced quality of localized content, and operational efficiencies leading to cost savings. IHG utilizes AEM to manage content in English and 16 other languages centrally, streamlining the translation process and improving quality by 33% using Smartling's WYSIWYG editor.

Smartling's analytics revealed key insights such as a low correction rate during internal reviews, prompting IHG to implement automated publishing, reducing time to launch a new language from six to eight months to about a month. Centralizing content also enabled IHG to save millions of dollars in translation costs while maintaining brand consistency across devices and platforms.