The Expedia Localization Vendor Summit in London

For more than two years now, Jensen Localization has been working with Expedia as their provider of Dutch translations.

Although we maintain daily communication with our clients, there are times where a more relaxed atmosphere allows you to go beyond the client-vendor relationship and transform it into a partnership, where you really feel you are part of a team that is working together towards a common goal.

And this is what we have experienced at the Expedia Localization Vendor Summit that we attended from 6th to 8th October 2015. Our PM at Jensen in charge of this account, Isabel Guijarro, and our Language Lead, Jenny Bos-Klok, attended this summit in London, where not only they could meet the people at Expedia with whom they work more often, but also the vendors working on other languages for this company.

These types of summits help you to understand how each department involved in the localization process works, and how our work fits in each of the stages of the process. During three days of meetings, they had the opportunity to learn a bit more about the different departments and brands Expedia needs localization for, such as Venere or Hotels.com.

Working with a big client such as Expedia does not mean that you just sit in a conference room and listen to a long list of requirements. This can easily be done by email. Expedia is a human-value company, where we can express our opinion about those things that would help us to improve our job and processes. Our colleagues took this opportunity to ask specific questions about reference materials, handoffs and tools for both translation and QA before final delivery.

Technology does help a lot, and we need it to work more efficiently and meet our demanding client requirements. But in the end, business is done between people, and when you are part of a multilingual and multicultural team of vendors, it really helps to have a face to face meeting from time to time to learn more about each other and empathise with them. Next time we are asked to do something we do not see the point in doing, we are sure we will find an explanation to it :-).

We want to thank Tommaso Rossi and Andrea Velasco from the Vendor Management Team at Expedia for their help since the beginning of our relationship with Expedia and for inviting us to this event, which really exceeded our expectations. We look forward to more years of successful partnership.

(Pictures courtesy of Expedia, Inc)