Tourism Business Start-ups
Business Support
Tourism Business Start-ups
Starting-up and joining the many and varied tourism businesses in North East England increases the diversity and appeal of the region as a destination, attracting more visitors and higher spending customers.
Where to start?
Our How To....Start a successful tourism business is a ten step guide that helps you define, plan, set up and launch a successful, quality tourism business. It guides you through:
- questions to ask before you begin
- how to define your ideas and develop a proposal
- developing the proposal into business and marketing plans
- finance and funding
- setting up, equiping and launching a business that meets market needs, delivers a quality experience and complies with existing legislation and expectations
- where to go for more help
Read and download How To.....Start a successful tourism business guide
What else will I need to consider?
Creating a Business Plan
Our How To.....Start a successful tourism business touches on the importance of a business plan. A business plan will define your ideas, objectives and strategies on paper and will project a financial forecast. It’s an essential document for all start-ups and has many functions from securing external funding to measuring success within your business.
Check out Business Link for further information on preparing a business plan
Contacting Business Link
From November 2011, the Business Link website will be your primary support service. It will be enhanced with new, easy-to-use information to help you start-up, improve and grow your business.
Contact Business Link
Research
Using research is an essential part of planning and managing your business. Use our research section for sourcing key facts, sector performance data, occupancy surveys, visitor trends information, investment and development data, tourism intelligence, and much more.
Go to our Research Library
Download and read our How To....Use tourism research guide.
And visit VisitEngland's insights and statistics pages and VisitBritain's insights and statistics pages for up-to-the-minute market intelligence, facts and figures, tourism trends and forecasts on domestic and inbound visitor trends and behaviours.
Marketing
In this section our eleven brand new 'How To' marketing guides help you to:
- define your target markets and customers
- tap into existing marketing opportunities
- decide on the marketing tools that work best for you including websites, brochures, e-communications
- help you keep up with the latest on social media marketing, mobile marketing and using Google to promote your business
We also tell you about Desti.ne - the easy way to reach millions of visitors worldwide and do business with them online.
Go to the Marketing section
Finance and Funding
A helpful section covering how to manage your business finance, where to go for more help and advice, getting your tax right, online bookings and payments, and sources of funding.
Go to the Finance and Funding section
Rules and Regulations
Understanding and complying with legislation is time consuming and can be confusing. This section gives you an overview of things to consider as well as where to go to get the information you need in order to comply.
Go to the Rules and Regulations
Training
Training for you and your staff is a vital element of business success.
Find out more in Training
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. Taking steps to be more accessible shows that, as a tourism business, you are aware of the importance of being open to all.
Go to the Accessibility section
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. Find out more about the Quality Assurance schemes available to tourism businesses.
Find out more in Quality Assurance
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.
Go to Going Green
Need more help?
Your local Area Tourism Partnership or Local Enterprise Partnership is your first port-of-call. They are:
Contact your Area Tourism Partnership co-ordinator
And for more help and advice check out our Tourism Business Start-ups Useful Contacts page
StartUp Britain
Check out StartUp Britain - a new campaign launched in 2011 by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs.. Designed to celebrate, inspire and accelerate enterprise in the UK, it has the full backing of the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and HMGovernment.
And don't forget
Document Library
Visit our Document Library packed full of support information, factsheets, and helpful documentation to download.
Case Studies
Visit our Case Study section for live examples of local tourism business success.
Contact Us
Can't find what you're looking for? Or need someone to talk to? Then Contact Us
Click here to read case studies from businesses on their experiences of starting up.
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