When people search for English and in English

Do you speak English, yes, great, but does your website as well?
Here’s a rather interesting story from the Austria Tourism Know-How Blog I would like to share with you:

The 20 most frequent searches were
1) All in English
2) The term: “English” itself is a main search term
These were the most frequently searched terms:
“english, guide, events, map, shopping, information, tourism, hotel(s), pension, contact, louvre, museum, art, cathedral, brochure, pikk, tourist and board, tourist and information, camping.”
Although the source mentioned “European Cities Marketing“ actually says that 25% less enquiries were counted in comparison to 2008, the main message from that article is:
People in Europe search the web mostly in ENGLISH.
So,it is well worth investing not only in a plainly translated website, but also to optimize your website for an audience wider than the typical German tourist ‘Hans Müller’.
Simply because you might lose out on all those who decided to still go on holiday during 2009. Even if there were less, there still were a significant number of people travelling.
The original blog from the Austria Tourism website can be found here: http://blog.austriatourism.com/stories/41681/