Business Support

A one-stop online shop for new and existing businesses.

This section focuses on the practical aspects of planning, starting-up, operating and developing a tourism business. From training courses, funding advice and assessing accessibility, to raising quality, legislation guidance and supporting sustainable tourism – it’s all here.

Follow the title links below to go to the toolkit section for each topic.

Tourism Business Start-ups

Where to start?

Planning and setting up any tourism business is a huge task. There are so many questions to ask and so much research to be done.

Which is why we've put together a step-by-step How To...Start a tourism business guide that takes you through the initial stages of planning and setting up your business right through to the essentials of developing, marketing and monitoring your business once up and running. This Start-up section also gives you a stage-by-stage guide to each business toolkit topic.

To read and download our Start a tourism business guide go to the Tourism Business Start-up pages

Finance and Funding

A helpful guide to sources of funding. We also point you in the right direction for up-to-the minute advice on business and financial planning.

Training

Training for you and your staff is a vital element of business success. It keeps you in touch with industry and customer expectations, increases the edge over your competitors, and raises levels of service and customer satisfaction. This section also points you in the direction of business training opportunities for you and your staff.

Rules and Regulations

Keep up with laws and legislation that help support your business.

Accessibility

There are 10 million disabled people in the UK who have a combined annual spending power of £80 billion. This market is an extremely loyal one with repeat bookings and recommendations commonplace. How accessible is your business?

Quality Assurance

Offering customers the very best quality experience ensures they will pass their experiences on to others. And committing to a nationally recognised quality assurance scheme means that customers know what to expect. This section guides you through the Quality Assurance schemes for tourism businesses and explains the benefits of becoming nationally assessed.

VisitEngland Awards for Excellence

Entering the VisitEngland Awards for Excellence is a great way of achieving maximum recognition for your business and being part of the very best that tourism has to offer in the UK. You will benefit from lots of extra PR coverage too!

Going Green

More and more travellers are seeking out tourism businesses that commit to sustainability. There are plenty of ways to demonstrate your commitment to ‘green’ measures including joining the Green Tourism Business Scheme. Many will save you money too.

2012 Olympic Games

Are you gearing up for next year's Olympics Games and the opportunites they could present to your business? Tourism 2012 Games is a free resource designed to help all UK tourism professionals and businesses, however big or small, to identify and connect with opportunities around the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. The site contains a wealth of practical information on the Games, advice on how you can benefit and resources to help you play your part in welcoming the world to the UK.