YORK was bracing itself for a bumper Easter today after the city was named as one of the Bank Holiday's top destinations.

A trip to the city is expected to be more popular with Britons this Easter than a holiday abroad, according to new research.

Internet company MSN Search revealed that York had received hundreds of thousands of hits from UK web-surfers in the weeks running up to the holiday period. Along with Edinburgh and Brighton, it trumped the sun-soaked beaches of Florida, Portugal and Gran Canaria.

The historic city was one of the top 100 terms entered into MSN Search by British customers, beating both Disneyland and Disneyland Paris, who failed to appear in the list.

The Evening Press's own website has seen a large increase in the number of visitors in the run-up to Easter.

More than a million people hit www.thisisyork.co.uk each month. In March, the number of those visiting our tourism pages rose by 20 per cent.

The Evening Press has also launched its own guide for visitors to the city called York Inside Out, which can be reached from this website. York businesses welcomed news of the strong interest in the city and said they were expecting a bumper Bank Holiday weekend.

Marco Frik, general manager of the Royal York Hotel, said he was not surprised York had been popular among those searching the internet, as the hotel was completely full except for five single rooms on Saturday night.

"It's just amazing. But we are always very busy at Easter and 85 per cent of our business comes from the UK," he said.

There has been a sharp drop in American visitors to the city in recent years due to September 11 and the war in Iraq, but Mr Frik said hotel staff had noticed that American tour groups were slowly returning to the city.

National Railway Museum director Andrew Scott said: "We are very optimistic for the Easter weekend. It has been a steady early spring and the signs are that people are ready to get out and do things away from home."

Gillian Cruddas, chief executive of the York Tourism Bureau, was pleased York was a favourite among British web-surfers.

She said the city's tourist information centres had not been as busy as this time last year, but she was still positive that York would have a prosperous Easter.

"More and more people are leaving their bookings later so we are expecting a late surge. The European market is very strong at the moment and we are expecting a lot of Germans, Dutch and Belgians and there are always a lot of UK visitors," she said.

Updated: 10:32 Thursday, April 08, 2004