Grow a tourism business

Planning is key to the success of your tourism business' growth. There are many ways that your business can grow. Research and planning will help you choose the right strategy.

Create a strategic plan

When growing your business you will need to make many decisions on how you want to expand your operations. Creating a strategic plan is a vital part of planning for growth. It is important to set clear, realistic, measurable goals. You should use decisions-making tools such as a business plan to help achieve your goals. 

See the following guides for more information:

• assess your options for business growth
• strategic planning for business growth
• prepare a business plan for growth

Assess your performance

One of the first steps in growing a tourism business is to assess your current business performance. This will help you identify your strengths, weaknesses and the things you need to improve. Key performance indicators (KPIs) for tourist accommodation businesses could include average annual occupancy rates, average annual room rates and revenues. These KPIs can be compared with business targets and industry averages. See measure performance and set targets. 

Conduct market research

Market research and market reports can help you gain knowledge about your marketplace and your customers. There are a number of ways of working out what are the best opportunities for your business. A SWOT analysis will help you identify the strengths and weaknesses of your business, and the opportunities and risks it faces. See a SWOT analysis example.

Finding your unique selling point can help you highlight the aspects of your product or service that will make it stand out from the competition. See find new business opportunities. 

Free market research guidance is available from Invest NI's Business Information Centre. Here you can access company databases and worldwide business directories. 

Tourism research intelligence findings can help you identify opportunities for your business. 

Write a marketing plan

Developing a marketing plan will help you grow your business and work out the best strategy to do so. The plan will help you identify where you are now, where you want to be and how you will get there. See how to write a marketing plan.