Research is an important part of the business planning process, and can provide you with valuable information to guide you in what you need to do to be successful.

When starting a business it is important to find out as much as you can about your marketplace, competitors and potential customers. This is called market research. You may wish to find out:

• How much demand is there currently for your product or service?
• How much are people paying for other similar experiences in other places?
• How many people visit your town or community, and which times of the year are the peak periods?
• What type of people visit your area, what type of people are your customers likely to be?
• How will your customers get to you - what are the transport options to where you are?
• Is tourism growing or declining in your area?
• Who else is currently doing anything similar in your area?
• What are the other planned new tourism products or services in your region?
• Will any of the new planned tourism products or services compete with you or bring you more customers?
• What are the key success factors for similar successful businesses, locally, nationally and internationally?

Start by looking at the websites of your local visitor centre, regional tourism organisation, state tourism organisation and Tourism Australia.

Read case studies and look at other similar businesses.

Look for research and statistics on the following websites:

• Decipher is Australia's premier tourism industry business knowledge portal, providing the nation's largest online range of quality business information for tourism enterprises.
• Tourism Forecasting Council publishes forecasts of tourism activity across all tourism sectors.
• The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) - Tourism is Australia's official statistical organisation. Read the product summaries or click on the titles to read the free Main Features.
• The Cooperative Research Centre for Sustainable Tourism has a number of useful publications including specific research papers on indigenous and eco tourism.
• Tourism Research Australia publishes two major regular collections of tourism statistics - the National Visitor Survey and the International Visitor Survey. Results of these surveys are available in quarterly and annual publications.