Brighton and Hove is one of the UK's top ten destinations for overseas visitors. The number of foreign visitors has leapt 24 per cent - from 270,000 to 332,000 - in the last year.

This has moved the city from 11th to tenth in the list of most popular UK destinations compiled by the International Passenger Survey, which samples more than 250,000 people arriving by land, sea and air.

Councillor Sue John, chairwoman of the council's culture and tourism committee, said: "VisitBrighton, the council's tourism arm, has been doing a lot of work to publicise the city on behalf of local businesses.

"That meant we increased the value of our media coverage in 2004 and 2005 by 70 per cent to £1.5 million, including two popular travel programmes in Germany and Australia."

Earlier this year the travel website lastminute.com reported that the most popular UK cities searched for were, in order of frequency, London, Edinburgh, Manchester, Brighton and Birmingham.

Councillor John added: "Given the multimillion pound budgets of these other places, it's a real credit to the city and our visitor team that we can compete in this way and attract such attention."

Friday, June 16, 2006