Worked example, not a client
Worked example: a bilingual holiday-let site, from brief to first report
This is a worked example, and it says so in the title, because we do not yet have a Welsh holiday-let client to publish and will not invent one. The property is illustrative. The decisions are the ones we make on every bilingual build, in the order we make them, with the reason beside each. The only figures are reference figures from two real accounts in other trades, marked where they appear. When the first holiday let on this site has sixty days of its own data, this page is replaced by that account.
By Daniel Stoychev, Webso Digital · 5 September 2026
2 in 3
Welsh speakers in the illustrative area (Census)
2
languages, each with its own addresses
60 days
before the first report can be read honestly
0
stock photographs
Welsh first, or English first?
Three cottages near Aberdaron, a Welsh-speaking owner, guests who come from Manchester and from Gwynedd in roughly equal numbers. The Census figure for the area is over two in three Welsh speakers, so Welsh is not a courtesy here, it is half the market. We would build Welsh and English as full equals with their own addresses, and let the guest's browser language choose the first view, with the switch remembered. Where the owner's own words exist in Welsh, the English is the translation, not the other way round.
Why. A machine-translated Welsh version would get the mutations wrong in front of the exact guests it is meant to impress. The Welsh copy is written by a translator who is a member of Cymdeithas Cyfieithwyr Cymru and read by a second Welsh speaker before it goes live.
Where does the booking happen?
On the site. The existing arrangement, a Booking.com listing and an English-only site from 2018, sends every guest to a commission. The build embeds the booking engine the owner already pays for, with the rate visible on each cottage page in both languages, so a guest who arrives from a Welsh search never has to leave.
Why. A holiday-let site earns by moving nights off the platforms. Every page therefore ends at a rate and a date picker, not at a contact form.
What does each cottage page say?
What is actually different about that cottage: which one sleeps six, which one takes the dog, which one has the sea view, the walk to the beach in minutes, the nearest pub that serves food on a Tuesday in November. Not a template with the name swapped. The photographs are the owner's, taken this year, with the season in them.
Why. Google filters pages that are copies of each other with a place name changed, and so do guests. The masked-similarity check we run on every site keeps sibling pages under 0.35.
What about the register and the levy?
Wales has a statutory licensing scheme for visitor accommodation and a visitor levy that local authorities can choose to apply. Both would be explained on a page of their own, in plain terms, because guests ask and because a site that answers a question about Welsh law reads as Welsh in a way a stock photograph of a castle never will.
Why. It is also the page most likely to be quoted by an AI assistant when someone asks about staying in the area, which brings the property up by name.
What goes in the first report?
Search Console impressions and clicks per page, split by language, so the owner sees which cottages Welsh speakers find and which English speakers find. The Google Business Profile position for the property name and for the area. Booking engine funnel: guests reaching the rate, picking dates, paying. Reviews on Google and on the platform, and the reply rate. And the one line that matters: nights booked direct, against nights through the platform, month by month.
Why. On the reference accounts elsewhere, sixty days was the first point at which any of this could be read honestly. The report says so rather than dressing up a fortnight of data.
What the real accounts show
The method, measured on businesses that are not holiday lets
A trade site a few miles from here went from 11.0 seconds to 2.4 seconds to become usable on a phone, PageSpeed 65 to 96, and its area pages from 72% to 29% shared text, in one week without a redesign. A business with no site at all was third in its map pack five weeks after launch. Both are on the results page with their periods and caveats. Neither is named, which is our rule for every case study. They are the reason we are confident in the decisions above; they are not a promise about your cottages.
How to read this page
- The five decisions are exactly the ones we make on a bilingual build, in that order.
- The property is illustrative and is labelled so at the top and in the title.
- Every number is a reference figure from a real account elsewhere, or a public Census figure.
- The accounts behind the reference figures are on the results page, each with its period and its caveat.
Have a property, and want this written against it?
Send the address of the current site, if there is one, and where your guests come from. You get an honest answer on whether a Welsh version is worth it for you, the three checks run on the existing site, and a fixed price.