Business Workshops & Seminars

Colac Otway Shire Council partners with state government departments and Subject Matter Experts (SME) to deliver training and support for local businesses and their employees. These events enable businesspeople across a range of sectors to connect with industry experts and each other to learn valuable and practical business skills.

Business Victoria

Business Victoria’s Learning & Advice website portal has information about workshops, courses and webinars. To fit in with the busy schedule of local businesses both self-paced online courses and live webinars options are often available.

The portal also provides information about the Small Business Bus visits and how local businesses can access one-on-one online advice from business mentors. The business mentors represent a range of different sectors and local businesses can access one free business mentoring session each year.

The Business Victoria newsletter is a valuable resource for local businesses as it has details about training, resources, grants and programs. Subscribe to Business Victoria's newsletter here.

Victorian Small Business Commission (VSBC)

The Victorian Small Business Commission (VSBC) delivers free public webinars for farmers, small business owners, retail tenants and landlords. For the VSBCs next webinar, please see their events portal link below:

Victorian Small Business Commission Events

The Victorian Small Business Commission also offers low-cost dispute resolution services, including mediation, and champions the rights of small businesses. They empower Victorian small businesses with the right tools to avoid or resolve disputes quickly, so business owners can focus on building and growing their businesses.

For more information, please see their website - Victorian Small Business Commission.

Great Ocean Road Regional Tourism

Great Ocean Road Regional Tourism (GORRT) has a Visitor Economy Partnership with the local government areas of Surf Coast Shire, Colac Otway Shire, Corangamite Shire, Warrnambool City, Moyne Shire and Glenelg Shire Councils. GORRT works closely with the Victorian state government and is the peak tourism body supporting tourism businesses throughout the region in advocacy, regional and destination marketing, visitor management, and product and industry development.

One of GORRTs key roles is also to deliver tourism industry training. GORRT provides industry-based training via their Cooperate website partner portal.

For tourism businesses GORRTs base marketing package is fully subsidised through the Colac Otway Shire annual GORRT membership investment. To access the partner portal, tourism businesses need to register for a GORRT partnership at this link.

Tourism Tribe

Tourism Tribe offers a comprehensive curriculum of training programs and support approaches to assist tourism operators to achieve growth and tourism excellence.

They offer a range of support and training services from one-on-one coaching, consulting, online courses, and Digital Engagement Health Checks (TM). These services can be delivered as standalone services, or as part of a membership to Tourism Tribe. You can see the different membership levels here https://www.tourismtribe.com/product/membership/.

Tourism Tribe also offer monthly free and follow up paid for online workshops which prove very relevant, practical and valuable to the tourism industry. While subjects may focus on the tourism industry, some training programs may be suitable for sectors other than tourism.