News / York – Europe’s Top Visitor Destination
York – Europe’s Top Visitor Destination
Thursday 14th June 2007
York has been crowned Europe’s top city destination after scooping an international award. Launched by European Cities Marketing (ECM), the first ever European Cities Tourism Awards were attended by over four hundred tourism professionals at a gala dinner in Athens last night.
Finalists in the category for Best European Tourism City were York, Gothenburg and Valencia.
The new awards scheme aims to celebrate world-class performance and to provide a benchmark for best practice among Europe’s tourism cities and tourism organisations. In line with its efforts to strive for world-class performance and prompted by the phenomenal growth of city tourism over the last few years, European Cities Marketing launched the first European Cities Tourism Annual Awards to recognise excellence and professionalism both among Europe’s tourism cities and their tourism organisations.
In addition to the awards’ criteria, the judges were looking for cities that demonstrated a strong customer focus in all their activities, sustainable tourism development and performance based on economy, efficiency and effectiveness.
Gillian Cruddas, Chief Executive of York Tourism Bureau said, ‘We’re thrilled to win this prestigious award. It is a huge endorsement for everyone involved in tourism in York. If an independent panel of judges has voted York best city destination in Europe we must be doing something right. This award will enable us to market ourselves even more strongly and is certain to help increase visitor numbers from Europe and beyond.
The panel of judges, Chaired by Paul Dubrule, Co-founder of the Accor Group and Chairman of Maison de la France, stressed how impressed they were with all the candidates.
Paul Dubrule said, ‘York has unique characteristics, such as its 2,000 years of history, a variety of world-class attractions, distinctive shopping and festivals and events – all of which make it a destination well worth visiting, and on a year-round basis too.’
Mr Dubrule contintued, ‘Yet what impressed the judges most, is that this is a powerful example of a highly successful private-public sector partnership. The public sector has invested wisely in innovative and imaginative infrastructure projects and this in turn has helped stimulate substantial private sector investment because developers are confident they will see a good return.
The investments have paid off handsomely. Over the past ten years, York has achieved a 52% growth in visitor spending, a 26% increase in tourism overnight volume, a 21.5% rise in average length of stay and 12% more employment in tourism. Even more importantly, as a result of the city’s success, the Tourism Bureau and its partners have gained the buy-in of local residents, who have very positive attitudes to tourism and recognise its economic impact and value.’
Ian Tempest, Tourism Manager at the City of York Council said, 'This is a particularly exciting tribute to tourism in York, as it values the work that teams from the Council, the Tourism Bureau, so many local businesses and partners such as Yorkshire Forward have put in over many years in improving the quality of the visitor offer as well as the marketing of York as a visitor destination. Tourism is a great success story for York - we're delighted the city has won this prestigious award'.
Prior to the Awards ceremony Tourism Bureau staff flew the flag for York at the hugely popular annual City Breaks exhibition which attracts one hundred and forty buyers from over thirty three countries. Other top European destinations exhibiting at the event included Paris, Prague and Barcelona as well as London and Liverpool.
Gillian continued, ‘Our trade mission in Greece has been to encourage European tour operators to add York to their programmes for 2008 and beyond and this win will certainly help us achieve that.’
