Helping hand for tourism tiddlers

ASIF MAHMUD is expecting plenty of calls in the coming weeks. Mahmud, 44, and his team are people London's thousands of small, tourist-related businesses in post-11 September distress can turn to for advice that is free for three days and cheap for up to a further five.

That is what it says in the mailshot that is going out in stages over the next month, coincidentally beginning as a delegation from the Mayor of New York's office and from the New York fire and police departments arrive in London.

Mahmud has a team of more than 35 advisers with tourism industry experience who operate out of Business Link for London. He came to London from Pakistan as a boy of seven with his late parents, Hasan and Salma, when Hasan, a diplomat, was posted here and stayed in retirement.

His son has been a City banker, and then general manager of Bloomsbury's 70-plus bed Whitehall Hotel. Mahmud has had only one call from a London suburban hotel that is having trouble filling a mere seven rooms.

'A small tour operator dealing with the US has just called to say business is 70% down,' Mahmud said, adding: 'There are London tourist attractions doing almost as badly, and we have had a stallholder at Covent Garden say the place is like a ghost town.'

London Tourism and Action Group, a Government and business co-operation, is putting up £1m to pay for the advice from Business Link for London. It is initially targeting 5,000 tourism and hospitality businesses employing up to 250 people and based in one of the 33 London boroughs.

Tourism employs 275,000 Londoners directly. It has been an £8bn-a-year business for the capital, but perhaps £1.5bn of that is going out of the window right now.

This is a year that the tourist business 'would prefer to forget', said hotel consultant PKF, adding that November occupancy rates in London hotels were down 14.6% on last year, although slightly up on the previous month, and the number of UK visitors is holding up.

London is Britain's prime tourist destination, and nine in 10 of London tourist businesses are hurting as overseas tourists stay at home, particularly the Americans and the Japanese. These smaller businesses can get up to eight and a half days of cheap or free help from the professional advisers at Business Link for London, which is part of the Government's Small Business Service.

SBS has its own troubles, for founding chief executive David Irwin, just 18 months in the job, has decided it is time to go. He has been told that it is not part of his job any longer to tell Number Ten when he thinks this or that length of red tape puts off otherwise expansion- minded small businesses from taking on more people.