Laying the foundations: Support your businesses
Top Tips
Understanding business motivations and concerns can help to increase engagement
Positioning accessibility as a business improvement tool will support this
Providing training, networking and conferences on accessibility will help to share knowledge and best practice
Engage with businesses
Supporting your businesses to improve their accessibility is a key part of your LVEP’s role. Understanding what is important to them can help you to ensure that your communications around accessibility have impact and that your support is targeted effectively.
“Businesses tend to focus on what they cannot do rather than on what they could do. They are often frightened of offending e.g. with terminology – we get asked “is it ‘disabled people’ or ‘people with disabilities’?”
Lindsay Rae, Visit Peak District & Derbyshire
SMEs may not always respond to the headlines outlining the volume and value of the accessibility market and the fact that they may be missing out. Each business will have its own vision and aims, and what motivates one business may not motivate another. Priorities may include:
- remaining in business due to external pressures of high running costs / reduced demand;
- improving competitiveness;
- creating a Unique Selling Point;
- enhancing customer service and quality of experience;
- addressing seasonality;
- serving the local community better;
- improving resilience in times of crisis.
Enhancing accessibility is not only a way of improving the visitor experience for customers with accessibility requirements, but also a continuous business improvement tool which supports all of the above. Including this message in your communications can help to increase engagement with your businesses.
There may be other perceived barriers to engagement. Understanding and addressing these is equally important. Those running ‘lifestyle businesses’, for example, may have a large proportion of regular customers and not feel the need to increase visitor numbers. For these businesses, the message may be to ‘grow with your customer’. As regular visitors grow older, they are likely to acquire more accessibility requirements. Making accessibility improvements will therefore help to retain them by continuing to meet their needs.
The Potential Business Barriers tool in the downloads section of this toolkit provides other examples of perceived barriers for businesses, along with some suggested responses.
Ensuring that accessibility is a common thread which runs through all your business support activities will help to maintain momentum and position accessible tourism as part of your mainstream offer. Remember to engage with businesses across the whole tourism value chain, including food & beverage outlets, tour guides and retail.
“A key barrier to accessible tourism development is the nature of industry, as businesses have so much on their plate. Our experience shows they would love to do more, but feel they have more important things to spend their money on and they say that with regret. They are also frightened of getting it wrong – ‘If I don’t know how to do it, I would rather not do it’ – and of being harangued on social media if they do.
Raising awareness is not always an easy process. It can take a lot of time for businesses to have a full understanding of visitor requirements. There are also lots of businesses whose premises offer some challenges e.g. they may have a ground floor bedroom but also have a gravel carpark to negotiate or steps with no handrail – and they are not sure how to deal with this.”
Malcolm Bell – CEO, Visit Cornwall
To help mainstream accessibility into all your business support activities you could:
- ensure that any guidance that you publish highlights the benefits of accessibility and emphasises inclusive tourism as a priority for your destination
- include accessibility as a theme within all the business support events you hold
- include the Accessible and Inclusive Tourism Toolkit for Businesses, and the importance of providing accessibility information, as an agenda item at business networking events, such as your annual visitor economy conference. You can also use the promotional communication toolkit to help promote this valuable resource to your businesses.
- host a webinar for your businesses and partners on the business toolkit. Record this if you can so that it can be accessed by businesses who could not attend.
- include regular messaging about any accessibility training available within your regular communications with businesses.
This PowerPoint presentation on the Business Toolkit (PPTX, 3.32 MB) can be used to promote the Accessible and Inclusive Tourism Toolkit for Businesses at your destination events.
Hosting short webinars on a regular basis to keep businesses up to date with progress on any accessibility initiatives will help to maintain momentum. These may also act as a tool to engage with new businesses. Remember to record any webinars so that they become part of the wider resources that businesses can tap into at any time.
When reaching out to your businesses, it is also useful to consider their other sources of advice including local and national membership organisations /Trade Associations such as
- UK Hospitality
- the LEP Network
- Federation of Small Businesses
- Business Disability Forum
- Chambers of Commerce
Ideally these organisations should also be promoting the same message about the benefits of accessibility. Working with them will help to ensure consistent messaging within your destination.
VisitEngland’s Accessible and Inclusive Tourism Toolkit for Businesses
It is also important to actively promote VisitEngland’s free Accessible and Inclusive Tourism Toolkit to your businesses. This is aimed at micro, small and medium-sized tourism businesses wanting to embark on, or continue, their accessibility journey. It provides ‘quick win’ practical hints and tips, as well as longer term aspirational goals, relating to physical and digital design, and business operations.
VisitEngland also provides a Communications toolkit to help promote this holistic resource to your business network.
Offer training
Offering training is a fundamental part of the business support package your LVEP provides. This should include workshops, webinars and networking opportunities on accessibility as part of your regular training offering and programme of events.
Training will help managers and front-line staff to understand the accessible tourism market, the barriers which visitors with accessibility requirements may face and how these can be overcome. By improving the skills, knowledge and confidence of staff it will support them in providing a warm welcome to every customer. View a list of potential training providers.
Businesses can sometimes have misconceptions about the word ‘accessibility’ which can present a barrier to attending training branded as ‘accessibility awareness’. Consider how best to promote your training in order to maximise attendance.
“We have delivered Accessibility Awareness training programmes across the region for over 15 years but were keen to encourage a wider range of businesses to attend. From previous experience, we know that the word ‘accessibility’ can be a barrier for some businesses who might think that this relates purely to developing wheelchair access necessitating costly changes, whereas accessibility is about far more than this.
Rather than offering a one or two day ‘in person’ ‘Accessibility Champion’ training programme, we decided to try something different by offering a series of online webinars focused on ‘Offering a Wider Welcome’ instead. Each webinar is focused on welcoming a specific visitor group, such as ‘Welcoming Visitors Who Are Deaf or have Hearing Loss’ or ‘Welcoming Autistic Visitors’.
By providing the training in this way we noticed a marked increase in the number of businesses attending. This was due partly to offering the training online in ‘bite-sized’ chunks, making it easier for businesses to attend, and partly due to breaking down the barrier which the word ‘accessibility’ can create.” — Lindsay Rae, Deputy Director, Visit Peak District and Derbyshire.
As part of any training, you may also want to encourage businesses to work towards a common set of minimum accessibility standards, such as providing accessibility information and providing training for front-line staff. Signposting businesses to the Top 20 Tips and Action Checklists within the Accessible and Inclusive Tourism Toolkit for Businesses will highlight other key steps they can take to improve their accessible and inclusive offering. It will be useful to bear these venues in mind when identifying businesses to include in your Kick-Start programme.
Consider running a B2B campaign featuring the Top 20 Tips on providing an inclusive welcome, which are shared on a regular basis through your usual social media channels. This is a ‘low cost’ approach for you and a quick and easy way for businesses to digest and learn.
Networking and mentoring for businesses
Facilitating networking with others, whether formal or informal, is a practical way to engage businesses, share knowledge and increase confidence.
You could also encourage informal mentoring where businesses support each other to develop their accessible tourism products. A more formal mentoring process forms part of the Enhanced programme.
Facilitate conferences
Conferences around the theme of accessibility are another good way for businesses to network and learn. These may include accessible tourism specialists, local businesses and suppliers of products which support accessible tourism. Further information on hosting accessibility conferences can be found in the Enhanced programme.
