Check out our recent Zoom interview with Rebecca George covering her role at BizHQ, her background, who she meets with and where. How she can help tourism businesses and what businesses need to focus on in 2021. (Full transcript below)
Transcript:
Good morning, we are doing another interview with one of our business connect advisors, welcome Rebecca George. We’ll just start with a quick question, what is your role at Biz HQ?
Hi Steve, so I am the tourism specialist with Biz HQ.
Excellent, so what’s your background and experience?
So, I have spent my entire career working in tourism, first I did a five-year degree in tourism management and international studies and then for the past almost twenty years I have been working in many different sectors in the tourism industry including accommodation, working with tours and attractions and most recently in a representative role. So, I have been working with different products, tourism products, to help them to promote their businesses and make more sales.
Oh excellent, thanks. So, who do you meet with on a regular basis, is it just hotels operators or winery operators or a bit of a mix?
It’s a mix, so in my role as tourism specialist I can meet with anybody in the tourism industry. This could be accommodation providers, tours and attractions, transport operators, cafes and restaurants. So essentially anybody who is looking to bring more tourists or more visitors into their business.
Excellent, so how you specifically help these business owners? Do you help them write plans and review things?
It depends on what their needs are, so my aim is to help them grow where they want to grow and if it’s a new business starting out one of the main things that I help them understand is the costs of doing business and factoring their own time and making sure that is going to be profitable before they even start. If its an established business who’s just looking to increase room rights it could be helping them increase their marketing, making people more aware of their product and to highlight what’s unique about their product and ensuring that that’s conveyed across all the marketing activities that they’re doing.
What should businesses be paying attention to in 2021?
In 2021 it’s all about being visible online so that people can not only find you but ideally be able to book you online as well. So destination NSW have identified that this is on of the key things there are looking for businesses to do and that’s shown through the latest round of grants that is currently available in order to be eligible you need to be bookable online, so that’s one of the main things I’m really enjoying helping businesses achieve at the moment and the other thing businesses and this is in line with being online that I always recommend businesses, particularly tourism business, have fabulous pictures. I would highly recommend investing in getting some great photography.
Excellent, so being bookable online and great photography, okay.
And then one extra thing is just being, if your not familiar already, destination NSW has some really fabulous resources out there, they have a NSW first program as well so I would encourage you to sign up to that program and just jump on their website and see all the different resources because when I’m meeting with people I’m often sending links to different webinars they have done in the past, there’s different resources that are available out there so familiar yourself with them because they are really fabulous.
Excellent, okay and if somebody wanted to get in touch with you Bek whats the best way of doing it?
So as um when working with tourism products I really love getting out there and meeting people firsthand because quite often when people are describing their business its very different to what a visitor sees when they first turn up so for me what I would prefer is to meet you at your location, sometimes its not possible because of the distance we’re covering Lithgow all the way through to Burke so find me on Biz HQ and if possible I’ll come out and meet with you in person but otherwise we can always do a zoom or even a phone call if that’s what you prefer.
Excellent, alright thanks a lot Bek George, so BizHQ.com.au if you want to get in touch.
Thanks for having me Steve, thanks everyone