YORK'S tourist industry has survived the loss of the "Yankee dollar" by drawing in extra visitors from other parts of the globe.

New figures reveal that tourists from the USA now constitute just over a quarter of overseas visitors to York.

By contrast, more than half of overseas visitors were from the USA in the late 1990s.

But visitors from Europe, Canada and Australia have largely compensated for the lost numbers.

The success in attracting such holidaymakers helps explain how York has largely bucked a national slump in overseas tourism to Britain.

Official figures have shown that the number of overseas visitors to the United Kingdom in 2001 fell by the biggest margin in 20 years, with a nine per cent drop on the previous year. But York saw a reduction of only three per cent in the year up to August 2002, despite the impact of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on September 11.

"We are celebrating that we have mostly made up the lost U.S. business by other means," said a spokeswoman for York Tourism Bureau.

However, she stressed that American visitors were big spenders - on accommodation, food and souvenirs - and the bureau would be working hard to win back the missing tourists.

She said there had also been a decline in visitor numbers from Benelux - the Low Countries of Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg - and she felt this might largely be because of Britain's high foreign exchange rate. She said the tourism bureau was working hard to build up business from Benelux, and was confident this would be reflected when the next statistics were released in a year's time.

The slight overall decline in overseas visitors to York was compensated for by an increase in British visitors, who comprised 81 per cent of all York tourists in the past year. The total number of visitors to the city in the year rose by 0.9 per cent to just over four million.

Meanwhile, a new strategy has been unveiled by the British Tourist Authority (BTA) to tempt more visitors from China, Russia, Poland and Korea. York does not at this stage plan to play any major role in such a campaign.

The BTA strategy also includes:

Increasing its overseas customer database to six million by 2006.

Continuing to focus on countryside, culture, heritage and sport but also trying to appeal to the lifestyle and age profile of foreign visitors.

Taking into account the effect of budget airlines on the European short-break market.

The launch of new Visit Britain websites.

The Government has announced that the British Tourist Authority and the English Tourism Council are to work more closely together to develop a lead body for tourism. The aim will be to strengthen the overseas marketing of Britain and reduce the UK's tourism balance of payments deficit.

Updated: 09:45 Friday, November 01, 2002