New Tourism Recovery Programme Launched

A new scheme has been announced to drive innovation, sustainability and competitiveness amongst tourism businesses as the industry recovers from the pandemic

The COVID Recovery Kick Start Programme is a business improvement and implementation support programme which will provide tourism businesses with free access to a range of advisory and mentoring support to inform critical business decisions now, and to ensure longer term sustainability.

The programme will help existing tourism businesses to develop recovery action plans across four key business areas:

• business model restructuring

• digital innovation and productivity

• recruitment and talent development

• environmental sustainability

The programme will provide fully funded, bespoke business improvement and implementation plans in one or more of the four key areas.

Following an initial Expression of Interest (EoI) process, eligible businesses will be invited to take part in a free diagnostic clinic with a Tourism NI allocated mentor.

At the clinic, all businesses will undertake a free financial health check with expert advisors to ensure that they have the necessary financial foundation on which to build their business and are aware of all restructuring options open to them. A summary report will be provided to each business detailing the conclusions reached.

The aim of the clinic is to identify if Tourism NI can support your business within the 4 programme areas.

Your appointed advisor will work with you to determine a scope of work for your business. You will then be issued with a letter of offer to agree the extent of mentoring support, your responsibilities and deadlines which apply.

At a later date in the 2021/22 financial year, participants who complete the Kick Start Programme may be invited to make an application through a 'closed call process' for funding support to implement agreed business interventions recommended during the programme.

This element of the programme is subject to budget availability and successful completion of Stages 1-3.

Which businesses can apply?

To apply, you must be an existing tourism business operating in Northern Ireland. The programme is open to the following sectors:

• private sector - companies and other legal entities and individuals.

• voluntary / community sector - community and not for profit bodies including companies limited by guarantee - applicants from this sector will be required to have a charity number as evidence that they qualify for the status.

The programme is focused on tourism providers and the following businesses are ineligible under this programme:

• sports clubs

• business start-ups

• local authority or destination management organisations

• visitor information centres

• shops, restaurants, bars, cafés etc

• businesses which are primarily craft or retail outlets.

The programme is scheduled to run until the end of March 2022.