This summer the Spanish Government expects 43 million international tourists to visit Spain, spending close to 64 billion euros, 10% more than in 2025. These figures come from the Ministry of Industry and Tourism and were published in the first week of July 2026.
Behind that number are millions of people who come to Spain to experience something they can’t get at home: the bull runs in Pamplona, the burning of the monuments at Las Fallas, the organised chaos of La Tomatina, the silence of Holy Week in Seville. They travel from Japan, Germany, the United States, Brazil and Australia because they’ve read about these festivals, watched them on video and genuinely want to understand them.
The problem is that “genuinely understanding them” starts long before they land at the airport. It starts with what they read on the hotel website, in the festival app, on the restaurant menu and on the street signs. And that first contact (whether or not it reaches them in their own language) decides whether the experience is memorable or frustrating.
The festivals the world comes to see
San Fermín (Pamplona, 6–14 July). The economic impact in 2025 was 259.4 million euros, with 424,000 attendees, 15% of them from abroad. Average spending per person was 412 euros over three days. People come from all over the world, many without a word of Spanish, drawn by Hemingway and by YouTube.
Las Fallas (Valencia, March). Three million visitors. Monuments up to 30 metres tall, built over months and burned in a single night. For visitors from abroad with no context or explanation in their own language, it’s a spectacle that makes no sense. With context and the story properly told in their language, it’s one of the most memorable experiences in Europe.
La Tomatina (Buñol, last Wednesday in August). 20,000 participants, 120 tonnes of tomatoes, and a town of 9,000 people that becomes an international destination once a year. Japanese visitors book a year in advance. 80% of attendees come from abroad.
The Tenerife Carnival (February). The second-largest carnival in the world according to Guinness World Records, with more than 200,000 people on the streets. Many foreign tourists discover it before Spanish tourists do.
Holy Week in Seville. Hotels are booked up 18 months in advance. Tourists from more than 60 countries. What makes the biggest impression isn’t the spectacle but the silence, something no English guide can fully convey unless it was written by someone who has lived it.
What international tourists expect (and where communication breaks down)
Tourists who come to a Spanish festival in 2026 arrive well informed. They’ve researched on Google, read reviews on TripAdvisor and followed hashtags on Instagram. They come with specific expectations and compare what they find with what they were promised.
The problem isn’t that Spaniards don’t speak languages. The problem is that many tourism businesses (hotels, restaurants, tour operators, event apps) have content in basic English that’s ten years old, unedited machine translations, menus with literal terms that mean nothing to a German or French tourist, and websites that rank in Spanish but don’t show up when someone searches from Amsterdam or Tokyo.
There are three points where communication most often breaks down:
The website and bookings. A Japanese tourist visiting a Pamplona hotel’s website during San Fermín doesn’t want to see a machine translation of the navigation menu. They want to understand what the booking includes, what the policies are and how to get there from the airport. If that information is poorly translated or isn’t in their language, they’ll book the hotel next door that does have it.
The experience at the destination. Restaurant menus offering “Grilled rape” for grilled monkfish (“rape” in Spanish) or “Cock soup” for chicken broth. Event signs full of terms that don’t exist in English and that nobody has adapted. Audio guides that sound machine-generated. Tourists notice, and they mention it in their reviews.
Post-experience content. Travel memories are built on what people share when they get home. If a tourism business has social media content in Spanish but not in the languages of its main visitors, it’s losing visibility in precisely the markets where it wants to grow.
Quality multilingual content is not a luxury
The average international tourist in Spain this summer will spend more than 2,500 euros per trip. Someone willing to spend that much to travel from Germany or Canada to see San Fermín is also willing to pay more for a hotel, a food experience or a guided tour if the communication wins them over.
High-quality tourism translation isn’t word-for-word translation. It means adapting content to the register, cultural references and expectations of readers in each market. A text about La Tomatina for the German market isn’t written the same way as one for the Korean market. The references, the tone, the amount of cultural explanation: everything changes.
What often separates tourism businesses that grow in international markets from those that never make it beyond the domestic market is whether their content truly speaks to potential customers in those customers’ own language.
How we handle it at Overseas Translations
For more than 13 years we have been translating for businesses that want to communicate well with their international customers. Since 2017 we have held ISO 9001:2015 and ISO 17100:2015 certification, the latter being the quality standard specific to translation projects. We work with native translators who specialise in each target market.
In tourism, that means translators who know how people search for a destination in German, which words build trust with a Japanese tourist and how to describe the Pamplona bull run to someone who has never seen a bull up close.
If your business operates in the tourism sector and you want your multilingual content to live up to the experience you offer, get in touch with us and we’ll explain how we work.
Frequently asked questions about tourism translation
What tourism content needs professional translation?
The most common items are websites and booking landing pages, restaurant menus, descriptions of experiences and holiday packages, signage and printed material, audio guides, event communications and social media content for international markets.
Is DeepL or Google Translate good enough for a hotel website?
For a first draft or internal use, they can do the job. For anything the customer sees (the website, the menu, the welcome email), a translation that hasn’t been reviewed by a native speaker from the target market carries a high risk of coming across as unprofessional or containing errors that damage the experience and your reputation.
How many languages should my tourism content be in?
It depends on where your visitors come from. Spain’s main markets are still the United Kingdom, Germany, France, the Netherlands and Italy. For destinations with large numbers of Asian visitors, Japanese and Simplified Chinese are becoming increasingly important. The best approach is to prioritise by visitor volume and average spend in each market.
Does tourism translation affect SEO?
Yes, directly. A professionally translated website adapted to the SEO of each market ranks in local searches in the tourist’s home country. An unoptimised machine translation is invisible to search engines in those markets.
How long does it take to translate a tourism business’s content?
It depends on the volume. A two-page restaurant menu can be ready in 24–48 hours. A complete website with landing pages, a blog and product pages can take one to two weeks. We always agree the deadline before we start.
