Brighton and Hove has been transformed into a world-class tourist resort which brings in £377 million a year.

Tourism officials say the city is now a major British tourist destination, attracting almost 200,000 overseas visitors a year and 7.7 million visitors from within the UK.

The figures are supported by a year-long survey by tourist officials in the city who found potential visitors rated the place higher than York and Bath.

Millions of pounds of investment and a lot of hard work during the last decade has transformed Brighton and Hove from a seaside fishing village into one of the country's top visitor attractions.

The survey asked 1,522 people who made enquiries about the city on its official tourism web site to rate it against other tourist destinations.

Another 1,401 who called tourism offices were quizzed to find out why they wanted to visit the city.

The top reasons for visiting the city included: wanting to relax, go shopping, simply to have fun or to visit the beach.

They were asked to score Brighton and Hove in a list which included Stratford-upon-Avon, Canterbury, Torquay and Great Yarmouth.

The city came top over 14 destinations, scoring an overall average of seven out of ten.

Brighton and Hove also beat other places renowned for attracting weekend holiday-makers in the lucrative market of mini-breaks, such as Newcastle and Bristol.

Fatboy Slim's beach parties and the Brighton Festival have also put the city on the global map.

Major new projects such as Frank Gehry's £220 million King Alfred development, the Jubilee quarter and the renovation of the Brighton Centre promise to build on that.

The results of the research are a feather in the cap for the Place to Be and city status campaigns, which propelled Brighton and Hove's reputation sky-high.

Tourism experts said the massive marketing drive, undertaken in 1999, has proved a resounding success, with the city now well-known across the world as a must-visit UK attraction.

Simon Fanshawe, who chaired the Place to Be campaign and now chairs the Brighton and Hove Economic Partnership, said: "We were saying we can be a world-class city.

"That we have now reached that stage is a huge credit to all the people who were involved in the campaign.

"Now we have to make sure the good work continues."

Brighton and Hove City Council's tourism chief Adam Bates said: "The last ten years have seen an acute transformation, seen particularly clearly by the renaissance of the seafront between the piers.

"And this shows no signs of slowing - the city is ambitious about the future."

Mr Bates said Brighton and Hove has always transformed and re-invented itself, with developments such as the Brighton Centre stopping the city going the way of many other coastal resorts.

He said millions of pounds of investment and the Place to Be campaign had made already enviable qualities unrivalled within the UK.

He said: "We had fantastic foundations which all that work built on.

"We have the Brighton Festival, the biggest arts festival in England.

"We have ten miles of superb seafront unlike any other.

"We have an independent retail sector that is second to none in the UK.

"We have a lot of small hotels that have transformed themselves from little chintzy outfits to some of the best boutique places in the country, as well as the renowned larger hotels.

"And, of course, there's the Pavilion."

Peter Stocker, secretary of the North Laine Traders' Association, said it was great news Brighton and Hove was finally getting the recognition it deserved.

He said: "It has always been wonderful but people haven't known it was here.

"The Place to Be campaign has really done its job.

"I was a bit sceptical of it at the time but they clearly knew what they were doing and it has really paid off."

Mr Stocker, who has lived in Brighton for more than 30 years, said change was now happening at a rate faster than he had ever seen.

He said: "When I first moved here there was a sign at the Jubilee site saying there would be a new library there soon and at the station site saying 'goods yard up for lease'.

"It's taken 30 years for those things to actually happen and suddenly it's all going ahead."

The recent research ties into a longer-term wider-scale project to find out why people who are still not visiting Brighton and Hove are not coming.

Work also needs to done to tackle things that visitors dislike about the city - primarily parking.

Ease and cost of parking were the biggest cause for concern amongst those interviewed.

June 9, 2005