Marketing Your Hotel to Japanese and Korean Guests

Japanese and Korean are frequently bought as a pair. They sit next to each other on the language list, they are often added to a hotel website in the same release, and they are typically briefed with the same instruction: translate the English.

They are not a pair. The two markets read hotel marketing differently, expect different things from the first screen, and punish different mistakes. A page that works in Japanese because it is measured and layered can read as evasive in Korean; a page that works in Korean because it is concrete and specific can read as blunt in Japanese.

This piece sets out what hotel content has to do differently in each language, where the recurring faults are, and how to brief the work so it lands.

Key Takeaways

• Japanese hotel copy is decided by register. The politeness level is a brand choice that English does not express, so it has to be made deliberately and then held across every surface.
• Korean hotel copy rewards specificity. Aspirational framing works when it is attached to concrete detail — the design, the wellness offer, the food — and reads as empty when it is not.
• Both markets are unforgiving about mixed registers in the booking flow. A marketing voice that changes at the payment step is more visible in these two languages than in most.

Japanese: the register is the brand decision

Japanese requires the writer to choose a level of politeness in every sentence, and English gives no instruction about which one the brand wants. Left unspecified, the choice is made by whoever is writing that week.

The consequences are not subtle to a Japanese reader. A level too high reads as distant and institutional, as though the hotel is addressing a committee. A level too low reads as presumptuous. Neither is an error anyone can point to on the page, which is why a proofread will not find it and a regional review often will not either, unless the reviewer is explicitly asked about register rather than accuracy.

Three further patterns recur in hospitality content.

• Length. Japanese hospitality description generally carries more detail than the English source allows for. A room description compressed to English length tends to read as a specification rather than an invitation.
• Sentence ending. Emphasis in Japanese arrives at the end of the sentence. Copy built on English word order puts the weight in the wrong place, and the line lands flat even when every word is right.
• Fixed terms. Room categories, restaurant names and loyalty tiers need a decision — translated, transliterated or left in the Latin alphabet — made once and recorded. Japanese pages are where brands most often end up with three names for the same suite.

IPPWORLD’s hotels and hospitality practice is supported by a team of native Japanese editors, and Japanese is one of the 30 languages IPPWORLD works in, 18 Asian, 10 European and two Middle Eastern. Japanese sits in several of the published programmes: COMO Hotels & Resorts took its website into seven languages including Japanese on Drupal, alongside CRM content, in-room directories, spa and food and beverage menus and press releases. Far East Hospitality ran websites and CRM content on Sitecore in Japanese for the Japan market, alongside Simplified Chinese and Bahasa Indonesia. Millennium Hotels & Resorts included Japan among the seven markets it covered, with quality assurance before go-live.

In Japanese, the question is not what the sentence says. It is who the hotel is being, while saying it.

Korean: specificity carries the aspiration

Korean hotel marketing works when the aspiration is anchored to something concrete, and reads as empty when the adjectives are left to carry it alone.

Hospitality copy written for English-speaking audiences leans on a vocabulary of general luxury — refined, timeless, effortless — that a Korean reader will skim past. The lines that hold attention name the thing: the architect, the material, the dish, the treatment, the view from a particular floor. Translating the English adjectives faithfully produces a page that is correct and unpersuasive.

Two further patterns matter for hotels.

• Lifestyle anchoring. Design, wellness and gastronomy are the categories Korean hotel copy tends to be read through. Content that leads with those is read further than content that leads with general brand statements.
• Formality band. Korean also has formality levels, and the hospitality band is narrower than the language’s full range. Copy that drifts between a formal written register and a conversational one within a single page is noticeable.

Korean is among the 30 languages IPPWORLD works in. For The Gap Partnership, courseware for C-suite audiences was produced in Simplified Chinese, Japanese and Korean, with bilingual glossaries fed into the Translation Memory — an illustration of the kind of terminology discipline that keeps a brand’s fixed terms stable across Japanese and Korean at the same time.

Where the two markets differ, side by side

How to brief the work

Both languages need decisions the English brief does not contain, so the brief has to be extended rather than translated.

1. State the register, per language. For Japanese, name the politeness level and show one sentence at the level above and below with a reason why each is wrong for this brand. For Korean, name the formality band.
2. Fix the fixed terms before writing. Property names, room and suite categories, restaurant and spa names, loyalty tiers. Decide translated, transliterated or left in English, and record the decision.
3. Supply the concrete material. Architect, materials, signature dishes, treatment names, what is actually visible from the room. Korean copy in particular cannot be written well without it.
4. Include the booking flow in scope. Button labels, field names, rate descriptors and confirmation messages, briefed to the same register as the marketing pages.
5. Name an in-market approver who reviews register, not accuracy. Ask them specifically whether a hotel they admire would speak this way.

IPPWORLD’s six steps put most of this before the writing: Understand the Project Brief, Pre-Transcreation Study, Transcreation, Client Review, Update and Approval, Final Delivery. The pre-transcreation study reviews style guides, tone-of-voice references and market-specific constraints, and uncovers the market-specific technical jargon and colloquial terms the content needs. The client review returns creative departures with the reasoning attached, which is what makes a register decision reviewable rather than a matter of taste.

At IPPWORLD, we are an award-winning transcreation agency that specialises in creative translation and marketing localisation for the hospitality, travel, lifestyle and retail sectors, named Best Hospitality Creative Translation & Localisation Agency 2019 at the LUXlife Hospitality Awards.

Conclusion

Japanese and Korean are bought together and have to be written apart. Japanese is decided by register: choose the politeness level deliberately, hold it everywhere, and let the description run longer than the English. Korean is decided by specificity: name the design, the food, the wellness offer, and let the aspiration attach to those rather than to adjectives.

Both punish fixed terms that drift and both expose a booking flow written in a different voice from the marketing pages.

Extend the brief rather than translating it, and most of the recurring faults never reach a reviewer.

Frequently Asked Questions

Send your Japanese or Korean pages and we will tell you where the register and the fixed terms are working against you. More on the work is on our marketing translation page, the market detail on our Japan and Korea pages, and the sector work in our hotels and hospitality practice.