• by Tanya Gazdik , May 26, 2015

The Mall of America is launching a multilingual Web site to cater to the three million international travelers who visit the tourist attraction each year.

The Minneapolis-based mall is one of the busiest international tourist attractions in the Midwest.

The series of multilingual webpages provide an in-language experience for speakers of Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Japanese and Chinese. The pages will allow for easier advanced planning and include information on shopping, attractions, dining and services.

International Web visitors -- based on their Web browser language settings -- will be auto-directed to Mall of America's new multilingual landing page when they visit www.mallofamerica.com on their devices, mobile or desktop.

The site, which includes tourism and visitor content as well as practical trip planning information, can also be directly accessed at http://visit.mallofamerica.com. Once on the site, guests are greeted by video content in the language of their choice, which was produced in partnership with Brand USA.

Content has been translated by native speakers and each language webpage also takes into account cultural preferences, highlighting specific brands that appeal most to each nationality. The entire user experience is both mobile and desktop-friendly and guests will always have the option of switching back to the English version of the site.

Previously, multilingual guests had difficulty finding information to help plan their trip to the mall, says Jill Renslow, senior vice president of marketing and business development at Mall of America.

"The addition of the new multilingual website allows for Mall of America to have direct communication with millions of guests each year, something we struggled to do in the past due to language barriers," Renslow says in a release.

With an estimated $12 billion in additional sales attributed to international tourism across Minnesota, embracing multilingual guests to enhance their interactive experience is the first step to help them discover all that Mall of America has to offer.

Approximately 3 million of the 40 million annual visitors to the Mall come from international destinations and like shoppers in the U.S., use the Web to search out stores, deals and activities while planning family trips.

International retail travel is a growing trend among visitors from Asia, in particular, says Doug Killian, senior director of international tourism at Mall of America.

"Thanks to a new 10-year, multiple entry U.S. visa made available to Chinese and U.S. citizens, shoppers looking to travel to the United States from China seek out fashion, jewelry and beauty products unavailable in their home country,” Killian says in a release. “Chinese travelers find Minnesota very attractive to shop for clothing and shoes, completely tax free.”