Howells begins promo tour with Hollywood jibe

Tourism Minister Kim Howells kicked off his six-day tour of the US, to drum up vital trade for the UK's tourist industry, in typically direct fashion today.

Before departure Dr Howells offered potential US tourists – who read the Financial Times – a traditional, jaunty British salute by accusing its Hollywood action stars of not having the "balls" to fly to Europe because of fears of terrorist attack. He was speaking after a clutch of screen actors did not make the trip to the Cannes Film Festival in France.

Dr Howell's has a history of using direct, uncomplicated language at public events. At a display of Turner Prize entries earlier this year, he wrote on a comment slip that the exhibition was filled with "conceptual bullshit". The Royal family have also been dismissed by Dr Howells as "a bit bonkers" in the past.

It is expected that Dr Howells will begin his US visit with a stopover at the "gateway" cities of Chicago and New York, whose airports accounted for 23% of US visitors to the UK during 2002.

Currently, the government claims that figures show the UK's tourism industry is "well on the road to recovery" following the effects of foot and mouth disease and September 11 - overall visitor numbers are up 1% on 2001 and up 8% on 2002. And Dr Howell's clearly believes that playing host to more high-profile personalities would boost that recovery further.

However, the recovery in the North American market has been slower than in Western Europe and elsewhere - latest figures for the first three months of the year show visits from the US to the UK were 14% down on 2001 and 9% down on 2002.

And as North Americans are the biggest spenders, this means tourist expenditure has not recovered in line with visitor numbers.

Dr Howells said: "The tourism industry has proven itself to be very resilient during turbulent times. Overall, visitor numbers are back to where they were at the start of 2001. This is a very considerable achievement.

"But visitor numbers alone won't sustain the tourism industry. We need people to spend when they get here. Unfortunately expenditure has not recovered so well, largely because of the lower recovery in the North American market.

"I hope I can help convince North Americans that we should be top of their list when shopping for a European holiday this summer."

The minister's visit will pave the way for a £2 million advertising campaign organised by national tourism lead body VisitBritain. It will target key gateway cities in the US next month.

Compared to the rest of Europe, Britain's market has performed strongly in the past year. In 2002 Britain saw a 2% increase in American visitors - in stark contrast to the rest of Europe, where the only other country to report an increase was Bulgaria, which recorded a rise of only 0.3% from a much lower base.

Of the 4.9 million visits to the UK by overseas residents in the first quarter of 2003 3.4 million were from Western Europe while 800,000 were from North America and 800,000 were from all other countries.

In 2001, tourism was worth £74 billion, accounting for 4.5% of the UK economy.

(GMcG)