English and siSwati are both official in Eswatini, but English dominates websites, shop pages and search. The lilangeni (SZL) is pegged one to one to the South African rand, and the rand is accepted alongside it, so prices are written with an E or an R and South African price lists carry over almost unchanged. The 2018 name change from Swaziland still splits search: people, directories and older sites use both names, which matters for keyword tracking and for how businesses describe where they are.
Retail is closely tied to South Africa. Shoprite, Pick n Pay and Spar run stores in Mbabane and Manzini, shoppers compare prices across the border, and several South African online stores do not deliver into Eswatini, so local ordering leans on shop websites, Facebook pages and WhatsApp. Mobile money is widespread: MTN MoMo and e-Mali from Eswatini Mobile handle transfers, bills and merchant payments. For news and advertising, the Times of Eswatini and the Eswatini Observer are the main publishers, and hotels in the Ezulwini Valley and around Mbabane are the core of travel rate comparison.
Eswatini queries on Google, the dominant engine, often return South African .co.za pages ahead of local ones, which makes checks from Eswatini connections useful for local businesses. Personal data falls under the Data Protection Act, 2022 (Act No. 5 of 2022).
Travel pricing in Eswatini splits between air and road. King Mswati III International Airport at Sikhuphe, in the Lubombo region, replaced Matsapha for commercial flights in 2014; Airlink flies there from Johannesburg, and Eswatini Air serves Johannesburg, Durban, Cape Town and Harare. Many visitors drive instead, entering from South Africa at the Oshoek–Ngwenya post on the Johannesburg road, or from Mozambique at Lomahasha. Hlane, Mlilwane and Mkhaya, the reserves run by Big Game Parks, take bookings directly, so their rates are worth comparing with the same nights sold through South African tour operators and booking sites.