YORK'S tourism chiefs are plotting a unique stateside mission to tempt U.S. visitors back to the city.
Kay Hyde, PR manager for the First Stop York tourism partnership, flies to New York on Saturday to take part in a 'Meet the U.S. Media' event.
Kay's quest is to turn around the dramatic downturn in U.S. visitors to York since September 11.
After the terrorist atrocities, York's hotel guest numbers fell drastically - and it is expected that total U.S. visitor numbers will drop by 20 per cent this year.
At the event, Kay will meet more than 80 American journalists and freelance travel writers, including the travel editors of the New York Post and St Petersburg Times. She said: "I will be taking this opportunity to promote not just York but the whole of the Yorkshire region. We will also be promoting our core values, York's history, culture and heritage."
She said she would emphasise the "special relationship" between Old York and New York, and the States as a whole.
Researching the links in the York Minster Library and Archives, she came across the design for a structural "boss" in the roof of the Minster's South Transept, which shows U.S. astronaut Neil Armstrong landing on the Moon in 1969.
Updated: 11:49 Thursday, February 21, 2002
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