Adding and updating your accessibility features on your listing

Visit West, alongside VisitEngland and Access and Inclusion UK, has been working to improve the accessibility information provided to visitors to our region. In order to do this effectively, we need to update information about what you, as businesses, offer and how we can showcase that information to visitors and customers.

What is accessibility? 

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) is a topic being addressed by an increasing number of businesses. In summary, the term ‘equality’ relates to ensuring that everyone can access the same opportunities, ‘diversity’ means valuing the differences between people and their identifying characteristics, and ‘inclusion’ is a measure of how safe and welcome people feel in their environment. These are important, big-picture concepts that accessibility is embedded in. 

Simply put, accessibility is all about removing barriers (whether physical, digital, relating to information and content, or attitudinal) to promote positive and equal experiences for all. It is the ‘actionable’ part of ensuring that EDI is on the agenda for disabled people in particular, but can also provide great benefit to customers and colleagues who might identify differently. 

To truly be effective, accessible tourism should involve the delivery of accessible products, services and environments and enable people with impairments and accessibility requirements to have independence and autonomy over their experience. 

Why is it important? 

1. Improving customer service and the visitor experience; 

2. Meeting the needs of underserved markets i.e. disabled people; 

3. Responding to changing markets i.e. an ageing population; 

4. Tapping into the growth of ‘3G’ family holidays and breaks (where three generations of a family travel together); 

5. Ensuring that valuable business is not lost: one person with accessibility requirements can influence a whole group’s travel plans; 

6. Contributing to sustainable and responsible tourism product development; 

7. Growing visitor numbers, both domestically and inbound; 

8. Supporting resilience and recovery in times of crisis e.g. the COVID-19 pandemic; 

9. Creating more job opportunities for disabled people; 

10. Boosting the image of your business 

11. Return visits and advocates for your business 

Image - An induction loop notice on one of the entrance booths at Noah's Ark Zoo Farm near Bristol

Updating your listing/s 

We are currently asking all of our member businesses to fill in a short, easy-to-use questionnaire (which should ONLY take between 3-5 minutes to complete), letting us know what the key accessibility features that you currently offer for people with accessibility requirements. Please note that we will be working to improve access to more detailed access guides in the future as well. See our next steps section at the bottom of this blog. 

These facilities have been developed with VisitEngland and other partners in the UK with extensive research to identify the most important features that people need to know in order to travel. These new facilities aim to build standardised facilities and feature sets across all tourism websites, including OTAs such as Booking.com and AirBnB etc. 

We have sent out emails to the lead/relevant contact on file at your organisation to complete these questionnaires. If you have not received an email from us by Friday 31 October 2025, please let us know by emailing membership@visitwest.co.uk and we can arrange for one to be sent. If you receive the email, but are not the correct person, please do forward on to the relevant person.  

Visit Bath and Visit Bristol listings - View our step-by-step guide to completing the form here

Meet Bristol & Bath listings - View our step-by-step guide to completing the form here

IMPORTANT INFORMATION 

Please note that the website will only display features for your venue that you select ‘yes’ for, for example, if you do not have facilities for assistance dogs, then no reference to this will be published. 

The following are not included in this questionnaire as they are statutory responsibilities, which should be provided as standard: 

- assistance dogs welcome;  

- information on the 14 major allergens in any food provided, along with food labeling requirements. 

Image - The Roman Baths

Top tips for completing the questionnaire 

• Be honest - if you have any doubt about a feature, do not tick the box. 

• Read the guidance - follow the guidance available for each question. 

• Review regularly - to ensure the information remains accurate, update the information as soon as you make a change and review the answers at least annually. 

• You MUST add your URL from Visit Bath, Visit Bristol, or Meet Bristol & Bath, that is NOT your own URL/web address but the one from your listing on the corresponding website. e.g https://visitbath.co.uk/food-and-drink/green-park-brasserie-p27921 OR https://visitbristol.co.uk/listing/mercure-bristol-grand-hotel/3877101 OR https://www.visitwest.co.uk/meet/plan-an-event/venues-search/aerospace-bristol-p2105803 - you can simply copy and paste from the URL bar at the top of the page onto the form. 

• If you have multiple listings on either the Visit Bath website or the Visit Bristol website (or both!), you will need to complete a separate form for each of these listings. If you aren't sure which listings you have on the website, please reach out to the membership team, who will be able to let you know.* 

*Please note this may not apply to your Meet Bristol & Bath listings, so please refer to the step-by-step guide linked above for more details. 

Choose the most relevant form for your business type 

Please choose the most relevant form for your business type from the ones below, noting that each form will have slightly different questions. 

*Please note that the form title currently says ‘VisitEngland Accessibility - Events, Festivals and Shows’. Please note that this is still the correct form to use. 

Image - Accessible bathroom at The Bristol Wing

What else do we need from you? 

Images

Do you have any great images showing visitors enjoying your place to stay, attraction, conference venue, shop, restaurant or experience? We are always on the lookout for inclusive imagery to showcase the region; these will be used on the websites as well as for press and media, visitor guides and more, so please do let us know what you have. 

Update your description (as well as your facilities) 

As well as filling in the form that we will send you, please do feel free to email us with any accessibility information to also be added to the main description (shown below as an example). Not only will this help your visitors find the information in different ways, but search engines will be able to pick up on this, making it more likely that someone will go straight to your business listing when looking for certain information. Plus, it helps us here at Visit West know about what you have so that we can better promote you and add you to relevant pages, blogs, and social media posts. 

VisitEngland's Accessible and Inclusive Tourism Toolkit for Businesses 

For essential guidance to help you improve your welcome for customers with accessibility requirements, check out VisitEngland’s Accessible and Inclusive Tourism Toolkit for Businesses, which includes practical tips and action checklists specific to your business type and technical built environment guidance for when new-build, refurbishment, conversion, and adaptation projects are possible. 

Our commitment to accessibility and next steps 

This exercise is part of a wider project to improve accessibility in our region for visitors and will feed into the project as a whole. Along with our Accessibility LVEP lead, Laura Valentine and the LVEP team, we will be rolling out more information about improving accessibility with links to more resources, featuring more detailed access guides, case studies, awards and information soon. We will let you know here and in our weekly industry enewsletters as more of this is rolled out. If in the meantime, you would like to get in touch with us, please do so at membership@visitwest.co.uk.

Image - We The Curious