VisitEngland, the body responsible for promoting tourism in the nation, has announced the launch of an online guide to advise businesses that are directly involved in receiving tourists, on strategies for marketing and promoting the facilities that they have for disabled visitors.
Called Speak Up!, the guide is particularly focussed on helping businesses to promote their disabled access, and provides information and advice on a broad range of marketing possibilities, including promotional literature and social media exposure. The guide’s ultimate aim is to help these frontline businesses obtain their share of the market for catering for disabled clients, which is estimated to be worth £2 billion per annum.
Disabled people account for nearly 17 percent of the population in the UK, and that percentage is growing faster than ever before as a consequence of the steady rise in life expectancy and the ailments associated with an aging population. Speak Up! intends to provide an all-inclusive source of information for all business establishments that want to benefit from this expanding marketplace. Accommodation providers and attraction operators are among those businesses that will find helpful information on public relations matters, pricing incentives, holiday listings utilising a range of media, and the benefits of developing relationships with specialist tour operators.
VisitEngland’s head of business support, Ross Calladine, commented, ‘There is a multitude of promotional channels available for businesses to reach the valuable accessible tourism market. Speak Up! aims to make sense of these, helping tourism businesses to effectively communicate with disabled people – who spend over £2billion a year on overnight trips in England.’
