Chamber Website Caters To Foreign Visitors

     Bienvenu à Falmouth.
     The Falmouth Chamber of Commerce website now allows foreign users to view information on Falmouth translated into five foreign languages.
     By clicking on a flag icon along the top of the chamber home page, visitors can view pages that have been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, French, and German.
     Christine A. Ross, president and CEO of the chamber, called the new feature “very exciting” and said it will help draw international visitors to Falmouth. “It means that we can be that much more accessible to a greater variety of travelers,” she said.
     The translated pages launched last week, and so far, Ms. Ross said, have been met with positive feedback. In fact on Thursday, she said, when a German visitor entered the visitors’ center on Main Street, chamber staff were able to print out information from the translated German page for him.
     Ms. Ross said the chamber chose the languages based on research conducted by the US Office of Commerce and the Massachusetts Office of Travel and Tourism, which also offers translations on its website.
     She said that they are looking to eventually expanding the website to include Portuguese and Italian, as well.
     Ms. Ross said that they have been working on the website translation project for the past year and a half, beginning when the Massachusetts Office of Travel and Tourism launched its translated website.
     The contract for the project was entered into by a new group of local chambers called the Local Cape Chamber Collaborative, she said, and Falmouth is the first of the group to launch the service. Harwich, Hyannis, and Yarmouth are in the process of translating their sites, she said.
     Though most websites only offer one introductory page of translated information, Ms. Ross said they went one step further by translating three full pages, focusing on traveling to Cape Cod, where to stay, and what to do.
     In past years, the chamber had relied on translated brochures to communicate to international visitors, Ms. Ross said, but through research they learned the importance of websites in attracting potential visitors who do most of their research and booking online.
     There has been an increase of visitors from Europe and Canada in recent years, Ms. Ross said, something that is likely caused by the favorable exchange rates.
     And while she called the influx of foreign visitors a “nice bump” for local merchants, Ms. Ross said that this summer has also seen many tourists coming from closer locations, with more people driving to Falmouth and staying for longer periods as opposed to making multiple trips through the summer.