HERITAGE BUSINESS PLANNING
Tourism UK ltd has prepared feasibility studies, options appraisals and business plans for a number of organisations and ventures including railway attractions, golf clubs, historic towers, prisoner of war camps, roman towns, country estates, brickworks and old mills.
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What is a business plan anyway? My answer would be it is many different things and will look different according to the purpose of the plan. Sometimes it is for the directors of the company to undertsand where they are going and what they will achieve if they get there. For some it is a case for support to be presented to funders and for others it is a real assessment of a business proposition which sets out whether the investment and risk are worthwhile.
A business plan requires some form of forecasting, this could be turnover, profit and cashflow. Whilst your accountant could do this for you (actually most people can do it themselves with a little coaching) it must be based on a solid market appraisal. You can only predict what you will sell if you have a knowledge of the market within which you are operating and a clear understanding of how you will differentiate your own offer. Then you will be in a position to forecast (posh word for guess) what your business will achieve in the future. In the words of the Japenese proverb 'he who can see three days ahead will be rich for three thousand years'.
So what do we do? Well we have worked on business plans for tourism attractions, hotels, self catering businesses and conference centres. In recebnt times many of these business plans have been part of options appraisals for historic buuildings, In fact we have worked on 4 Scheduled Ancient Monuments and a huge number of listed buildings. What we bring to the process is a pragmatic, market driven attitute which helps the client achieve a plan which is realistic, beleievable and defensible. Sometimes what you need is another perspective.
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