A two-year VisitEngland and AccessAble programme has produced guides for more than 480 tourism businesses, with one in three surveyed participants reporting more visitors with accessibility requirements.
VisitEngland and AccessAble are expanding detailed accessibility information for tourism venues across England to help visitors make more confident trip-planning decisions.
- One in three of 108 surveyed businesses said their Detailed Access Guide had contributed to an increase in visitors with accessibility requirements.
- A quarter of respondents reported more customers overall, while 23% had received customer feedback saying the guide played a part in the decision to visit.
- The VisitEngland-AccessAble collaboration has generated new guides for more than 480 businesses through partnerships with 28 Local Visitor Economy Partnerships.
- VisitEngland says England now has more than 10,000 AccessAble visitor-economy guides, supporting a tourism market associated with an estimated £14.6 billion in annual spending.
(NEWS) LONDON, England, United Kingdom, 2026-Sep-09 — /Travel PR News/ — Clearer accessibility information is beginning to show a measurable business benefit for parts of England’s visitor economy, according to an evaluation of a two-year programme run by VisitEngland and AccessAble.
The March 2026 evaluation found that one in three participating businesses said they had seen an increase in visitors with accessibility requirements as a result of producing a Detailed Access Guide. A quarter reported an increase in customers or visitors overall, while 23% said customers had specifically told them that the guide played a part in their decision to visit.
The findings give the programme a commercial dimension beyond compliance or destination inclusivity. For tourism businesses, detailed information about entrances, routes, facilities and other access features can reduce uncertainty before a trip and help visitors decide whether a venue is suitable for their individual requirements.
There is an important limitation to the figures: the evaluation was a survey of 108 businesses that had received VisitEngland funding to produce a guide and had had it live for at least six months. The results therefore capture businesses’ reported experience rather than independently audited booking or footfall data, and they do not by themselves establish that the guides caused every reported increase.
Confidence rises alongside reported visitor numbers
The survey also points to operational benefits within participating businesses. Seventy-one percent said their knowledge or confidence had increased since producing an accessibility guide, and 60% believed perceptions had improved about how welcoming their venue was to visitors with accessibility requirements.
Recommendation levels were especially high: 95% of respondents said they would recommend that similar businesses consider producing a Detailed Access Guide with AccessAble.
AccessAble describes its Detailed Access Guides as venue-specific collections of facts, figures and photographs designed to let people judge for themselves whether a place meets their access needs. That level of detail is particularly relevant because accessibility requirements vary widely and cannot be captured reliably by a simple “accessible” or “not accessible” label.
Programme expands through England’s destination network
Since the collaboration began in 2024, VisitEngland says it has helped unlock regional partnerships between AccessAble and 28 Local Visitor Economy Partnerships, or LVEPs. Those arrangements have resulted in new guides for more than 480 tourism businesses.
The programme has also increased the stock of accessibility information available to visitors. VisitEngland says there are now more than 10,000 Detailed Access Guides covering visitor-economy venues in England, supported by dedicated regional and national landing pages on AccessAble’s website.
The scale matters because a substantial share of potential tourism demand is affected by access considerations. VisitBritain research and business guidance says 45% of adults in England who identify as disabled did not take an overnight holiday in England during the previous 12 months, compared with 34% of non-disabled adults.
VisitBritain estimates the annual value of tourism trips in England taken by people with an impairment, or by groups in which a member has an impairment, at £14.6 billion. The estimate combines inbound visitor spending from 2023 with domestic overnight and day-visit spending from 2024.
For destinations and operators, the evaluation suggests that publishing detailed access information can be more than a customer-service exercise: it may influence trip planning, help businesses reach visitors who need greater certainty before booking and improve staff confidence in serving a broader market.
VisitEngland provides further guidance for tourism businesses on creating and publishing accessibility information, including the route to producing a Detailed Access Guide through AccessAble.
