Why Yorkshire as a whole needs to shout as loudly as possible to promote itself as a destination - Andrew Vine

Talking to a few people involved in the tourist trade, I found a sense of optimism about the months ahead. The word is that bookings for accommodation are looking good, which is what the town wants to hear.

My own phone calls and trawl of websites in search of somewhere to stay in Whitby in a few weeks’ time are telling a similar story. Places are being booked up fast.

Dare we hope for a bumper summer of tourism in Yorkshire? I think we can, and not just because of what you hear from businesses in Filey or Whitby.

For the second successive month, there is solid evidence that increasing numbers of visitors are either discovering for the first time how glorious a place this county of ours is, or returning to favourite spots after an enforced absence because of Covid restrictions.

Figures from the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions to mark the start of English Tourism Week were cause for rejoicing because they showed some of Yorkshire’s most iconic places pulling in record numbers of people over the previous 12 months.

York Minster was the star of the show, more than doubling its numbers with 620,000 people visiting.

A mile away, the National Railway Museum was up 65 per cent, and elsewhere in Yorkshire there were big leaps for RHS Harlow Carr, in Harrogate, Harewood House and Castle Howard amongst others.

There’s an encouraging trend here. Last month, English Heritage reported similarly buoyant visitor numbers at the historic sites it looks after. Whitby Abbey saw record numbers, and there were substantial increases at Mount Grace Priory, Pickering Castle, Richmond Castle and Clifford’s Tower.

In Calderdale, there has been an influx of tourists keen to explore the locations where Sally Wainwright’s brilliant crime drama Happy Valley was filmed and in Leeds, the year of cultural events now under way is bound to attract people who want to explore what the city has to offer.

This is very good news for Yorkshire and points to the county having massive appeal for tourists that needs to be capitalised on.

Those of us who live here are perhaps guilty of taking what’s around us for granted.

We shouldn’t and Yorkshire as a whole needs to shout as loudly as possible to promote itself as a destination.

The breadth of what we have to offer is unrivalled by anywhere else in the country.

The coast may be the traditional magnet for visitors, lured by the timeless appeal of the great British seaside holiday – which, let’s not forget, was pioneered by Scarborough.

But heritage and culture are, quite obviously, of increasing importance. Whether at York Minster or at Whitby Abbey, visitors have an appetite for exploring the past, walking in the footsteps of long-departed generations in places where the past comes vividly alive.

Culture and the arts are of especially powerful appeal. Leeds is currently proving that, and Bradford will follow suit when it steps into the spotlight as UK City of Culture in 2025.

But there is also the sculpture triangle of Wakefield’s Hepworth, the Yorkshire Sculpture Park and the Leeds City Museum and Art Gallery, one of the destinations that saw a big rise in visitor numbers last year.

One of the things the volume of tourists is telling us is that Yorkshire enjoys a level of brand recognition amongst British people looking for a break that most other English counties simply do not have.

When people think of Yorkshire, they have a picture in their minds – dramatic landscapes of moors and dales, a breathtaking coastline and great cities, once the workshops that built Britain and now reinvented as vibrant places to shop and socialise.

Very few other counties have that sense of instant recognition.

Individual areas of the county – and attractions - do splendid work in promoting themselves, but to build visitor numbers still further there needs to be much more cooperation in selling Yorkshire as a whole and placing emphasis on the huge range of what we have to offer.