YORK'S tourist industry is enjoying a record breaking year with new highs for room rates and occupancy rates at the city's hotels.

New figures from the city's tourism agency Visit York reveal the best ever second quarter for the hospitality sector since the organisation began its hotel survey five years ago.

While the first half of 2014 has seen growth in all sectors, compared with January to June 2013, July onwards has also seen increasing figures, with footfall and visitor numbers on the up.

Kate McMullen, head of Visit York said: "We’re delighted with the tourism results for the first six months of this year.

"We’ve seen growth across all sectors including hotel occupancy, visits to attractions and footfall through our world-class visitor centre - that’s set against the record year we had in 2013.

"What’s exciting too is that visitors are now booking much longer stays, discovering not just the city but also the rest of Yorkshire while they are here."

In the first six months of 2014 York's hotels reported a six per cent increase in both hotel room occupancy and average room rates, up to 78.5 per cent and £76.33 respectively.

Growth was more modest for the attractions sector, with visitor numbers up by 0.3 per cent to the large attractions and 1.1 per cent to the smaller attractions, with smaller rises attributed to 2013 being a record year for the big attractions partly as a result of the Mallard75 at the National Railway Museum.

York's Visitor Centre saw its busiest ever day on June 30 with a record number of customers to date at 3,958.

The industry enjoyed a strong start to quarter three too as city centre footfall rose by 33 per cent in July, and by 40 per cent during the weekend York hosted the Tour de France.

In July hotels also saw their average room rates continuing to sit above those achieved last year, and saw the largest monthly growth for the year to date, up 12 per cent to £89.22, which is the highest monthly average room rate recorded since the survey began.

Hotels also enjoyed a new record room occupancy rate at 92 per cent, one per cent higher than in July last year.

More records were broken in August, with July’s highest ever room occupancy record being exceeded, and while the average room rate didn't beat the July record, it took second place, at £88.70, which was seven per cent higher than August 2013.

Footfall through the information centre dropped slightly in August, following a prolonged period of growth, by t wo per cent, however, city centre footfall was higher than recorded in August 2013 as the camera in Parliament Street was 1.2million times.

On paper, the attractions didn’t fare so well in July against July 2013's figures, with visits to the large attractions 28 per cent lower, again attributed to the success of last year's National Railway Museum attractions. However figures remained 10 per cent higher than July 2012, which Visit York describes as a "more typical year".

Small attractions reported four per cent growth in their visitor numbers in August to 27,484, following a slower start to the summer.