Kick-Start programme: Initiate a business-to-business engagement campaign
Top Tips
Initiate a B2B campaign to engage businesses
Encourage businesses to provide accessibility information and promote the business toolkit, including the action checklists
Signpost businesses to available training
Create a B2B engagement campaign
Creating a B2B engagement campaign will help to highlight your commitment to developing an accessible destination. It will also provide your businesses with easy ways to become involved with your Kick-Start programme and to demonstrate their commitment to accessibility and to making every visitor welcome.
VisitEngland are looking to develop a consistent B2B campaign name and identifier for use by all LVEPs. This toolkit will be updated to reflect the outcomes of this process once it is completed.
For businesses to participate it is recommended that they have accessibility information, as a minimum. This is their first step towards improving and promoting their accessibility. You should also signpost your businesses to relevant accessibility training provided either by yourself or third parties.
Providing accessibility information and taking part in your Kick-Start programme is not a guarantee of accessibility for everybody, but demonstrates a clear commitment to understanding and meeting visitor accessibility requirements. In turn this also helps disabled people and others to make informed choices about where they visit.
The campaign should:
- provide an easy way for businesses to become involved;
- highlight the opportunities offered by the accessible tourism market and ‘demystify’ accessible tourism;
- encourage businesses to create Accessibility Guides to enable effective visit planning;
- Signpost businesses to VisitEngland’s Accessible and Inclusive Tourism Toolkit for Businesses.
Initiate a B2B campaign which:
- includes an information / ‘sign up’ page on your business facing website to allow access to specific resources such as webinars which you may host. This allows you to track interest and to follow up with businesses on the progress they are making.
- uses social media to reinforce your messages.
You could also hold a launch event for your Kick-Start programme, where funds permit.
Case Study
Newcastle Gateshead Initiative’s Everybody Welcome programme aims to showcase accessible tourism products throughout the Newcastle Gateshead region.
The Everybody Welcome name was chosen because it provides reassurance that accessible tourism is really all about what visitor economy businesses know best: the ‘welcome’. The brand identifier, an open door, helps to reinforce this.
A banner promoting the initiative runs across the top of the NGI website homepage, and there is a dedicated Everybody Welcome page where businesses can easily sign up for the programme. The page also summarises the size of the accessible tourism market and highlights the benefits to businesses of being involved.
The campaign is backed up by a PR and social media marketing campaign running over several months
Address perceived business barriers
It is important for any B2B engagement campaign not only to set out the benefits of meeting the needs of travellers with accessibility requirements, but also to address the perceived business barriers which may have stopped some from meeting these needs previously. The perceived business barriers tool is available in the downloads section of this toolkit.
