Recovery from the pandemic introduced a unique set of challenges that required businesses to upgrade their traditional ways of working on innovative, digital and sustainable solutions. How can destinations up-skill their local workforce and empower businesses in the post-covid period?

‍

To address the challenge, DTTT worked with Visit Kent to support with the creation of a Product and Experience Development Programme for local businesses. The programme was part of the Interreg funded ‘EXPERIENCE’ programme, including other regions in the UK and other partners in Belgium and France.

‍

Before offering a solution, we worked closely with the local businesses involved in the 'EXPERIENCE' programme to understand their pain points and the challenges they faced after the pandemic. This extensive programme of work followed on from a successful series of Covid recovery sessions and helped businesses to address issues, such as seasonality, repeat visitation, increasing opportunities through collaboration, events, digitalisation, seasonality and much more.

‍

DTTT prepared an extensive package of resources addressing the needs of a wide range of partners and stakeholders, including Visit Kent, South East Enterprise Partnership, North Downs Area of Natural Beauty and five district councils. A series of training programmes were developed, divided into twenty-one training sessions covering a variety of topics, from ‘Adapting Your Business Model to New Trends’ to ‘Understanding the Incentives Market’, to Working with the Travel Trade’, to ‘Upselling and Increasing Return Visitors’.

‍

‍

While developing training material, we ensured the sessions were user-friendly and engaging. To achieve this, we ensured the material was produced in the form of PDFs for easy access and interactive training videos. The training pack included summaries of key takeaways and references to case studies as part of extensive training guides, breaking down each topic area into detail and highlighting interesting examples both locally and internationally. Apart from this, businesses were able to access interactive video lessons to be integrated into Visit Kent's business portal.

‍

Some of the sessions of the training programme will also be translated and delivered in French, to cater for the businesses from the different regions partnering in the programme. The sessions are all about empowering businesses towards defining future strategies and increasing competitiveness whilst addressing seasonality and increasing the overall value of each visitor.