Suppose you´re hungry. You stroll down to your favourite restaurant back home in Ohio, Shanghai, 
Barranquilla or wherever you happens to live. You find a smorgasbord of mouth-watering seafood offered on the menue. One of them is, say, kräftor med vitlökssmör och ostpaj. Would you order it? Didn´t think so. Well, actually it´s a delicacy if you love seafood: crayfish with garlic butter and cheese pie. You just didn´t know. So why would you buy it?
The same goes for tourism in Sweden. The lion´s share of our attractions are unknown to most people abroad, mainly because they´re not marketed properly. If there is a website, which is not an axiom, it´s far too often in Swedish only. Or with a simple a summary in English.
It´s estimated that one out of four of the world’s population speak English to some level of competence. As of October 2008, the world´s population is estimated to be about 6,7 billion. That would give at hand that approximately one-thousand-sixhundred-seventyfive-million people, to some extent, understand English. About a thousand million people speak mandarin.
Nine (9) million speak Swedish.
A 3 minutes random selection of Swedish travel-related websites:
- A couple of nationwide coach operators: Härjedalingen and Y-Buss
- A Nationwide train operator (this is where you´re supposed to make reservations): Veolia
- An outstanding seafood restaurant with a superb location by the sea: Albertina Restaurant
- A tourist information center offering wildlife & bear watching tours: Herjedalsporten
- An “information in English” from a tourist information center located in the midst of Stockholm´s world famous archipelago: Dalarö Tourism Information
- One of Sweden´s major family attractions with 350,000+ visitors/year: Skara Sommarland
- And finally a similar one in Leksand town – one who´s got it right: Leksand Sommarland
See what I mean? It´s a mystery why there´s no strategy from Swedish tourism authorities to make most of our attractions available to an international audience. Once you get here, there´s not much of a problem, since most Swedes speak better english than the rest of the english-speaking world will ever learn to speak Swedish. But that´s not an excuse for poor marketing.
Considering the fact that international tourists spend 7 times the amount of national tourists a day, and each spent tourism krona gives at least 3 more to the local super market, gas station or whatever, a translation support programme for tourism entrepreneurs would be like buying money for society.
Do I make myself understood?
/ Curt Landin
Fortunately, Swedish tourism is sky-rocketing anyway thanks to those who already have implemented a successful marketing strategy. You´ll find most of them at VisitSweden.com. Imagine what it would be like with another 5000 attractions or so to choose between…