What Is the Translation Feature for Guests?
Akia will automatically detect the guest's preferred language when the guest messages the property, and it will automatically translate them into the hotel’s/staff's preferred language. In the guest’s chat thread, you’re able to translate your outgoing messages into the guest’s preferred language.
Akia Tip: Translations for outgoing messages need to be enabled manually so your team can double-check if the language detection is correct before proceeding to communicate with the guest in their preferred language.
How Do I Set Up Translations for Incoming Messages?
- Go to Settings > Customer Languages
- Select Allow translation of languages to and specify which language incoming messages should automatically be translated to
- If this is unchecked, Akia will not automatically translate incoming messages and you will not have the option to set the guest’s language under their profile.
- Optionally, you’re able to set the language of the guest based on their phone number’s country code.
- The page saves automatically, so now all incoming guest messages will be translated into the specified language.
How Do I Set Up Translations for Outgoing Messages?
Translations for outgoing messages need to be enabled on a per-guest basis to reduce the chance of the wrong language being detected and mistranslations.
- Go to the guest profile in Inbox or by searching their name in the top right search bar
- If translations have been enabled in the above steps, a widget will appear under the guest name prompting you to enable translations
- Once you click Enable, your outgoing messages will be automatically translated to the guest’s detected language. This also shows in the guest profile like so:
Akia Tip: Clicking Disable will stop all messages (incoming and outgoing) from being translated. If you want to re-enable incoming translations, click the Edit button shown above and re-enable translation at the bottom of the page.
How Do I Set Up Translations for Users/Staff?
- Go to Staff and Departments in Settings
- Select and click on a staff
- Select the desired language for the staff
- Click OK to save
Use Cases
- 🗺 Communicate with international guests: Enabling translation for incoming and outgoing guest messages allows your team to better assist international guests with their questions and experience during their stay.
- 🌐 Automatically set a guest’s language: By setting a language based on the guest’s country code, there will be less errors than with the auto-detection and your team can better support them.