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:

• Visit County Durham
• Northumberland Tourism
• NewcastleGateshead Initiative 
• Tees Valley Unlimited 

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.