Support a Vibrant Tourism Ecosystem
Client: Visit Worcestershire
Challenge
The UK tourism sector continues to face challenges such as rising costs, recruitment and retention issues, low-cost foreign competition and economic uncertainty. Worcestershire, is famous for its beautiful countryside, rivers, towns, and historic sites. The local LVEP, Visit Worcestershire, identified a need to provide local business consultancy as part of its destination management plan.
Approach
Over a three-year period, View from the Hill and its Associates developed a program to enhance local business resilience and sustainability. Key elements included:
* Themed seminars for up to 8 businesses per session.
* 1:1 bespoke consultancy covering business planning, leadership and mentoring,
* marketing and promotion and diversification.
* Bi-monthly networking meetings to foster collaboration with Visit Worcestershire.
Impact
The initiative created a vibrant partnership network, attracting 30-40 businesses per event, now managed by Visit Worcestershire. The consultancy has supported over 90 businesses with 82% of businesses rating the support as either extremely or very effective and 87.5% rating the quality of advice as excellent.
Client Testimonial –
Aztec Adventures
“The programme helped us take a step back and focus on the direction the business will take in the future, both for next season and beyond…A wide range of areas were discussed, some being leadership, staff training and motivation, marketing, researching competitors and discussing other grants and opportunities.”
Treeopia
“We really valued Nicky’s help and coaching. As a small business, we have to juggle a lot of competing priorities so it was very useful having a sounding board to test new directions and ideas. As a result we now have a structured forecast for the next 12 months, a better understanding of social media and a clear way forward with a new customer offer.”
The Swan Theatre
“The consultancy has been extraordinarily helpful for myself and my team as we approach our plans for the future. “
