DAVID ANDREWS, chief executive of the York-based Yorkshire Tourist Board explores York's place in the conference market and looks forward to the Yorkshire Tourism Conference to be held at York Racecourse in the Spring.

I lose count of the number of times people say: "What a relief that the busy summer is over and you can relax."

Well that's not the way it works for tourism. Summer hordes may have left, but now we have the Christmas season to look forward to, shopping weekends, post Christmas breaks and the very popular Christmas markets. Most famous of all, of course, is York's own St Nicholas Fayre, which pulls visitors in by the coachload.

But beyond the consumer tinsel and shopping frenzy Christmas brings, there are still the everyday business tourism needs to see to. The conferences and meetings market continues year round.

York is perfectly placed to benefit from the mid-sized conference. The range of product throughout the city is excellent.

Today's meetings and conference organisers are not only looking for the standard meeting room or conference hall and up-to-the- minute audio visual package: they want something out of the ordinary and tourism businesses in York are supplying that.

The National Railway Museum, National Centre for Early Music, St William's College all provide excellent meetings and conference facilities in unusual settings and they are by no means the only ones.

Perhaps one of the most popular venues, York Racecourse, illustrates best what can be done when catering for a variety of different customers. So it is fitting that York Racecourse is to be the venue for the Yorkshire Tourism Conference.

This Spring York will host perhaps the most important conference to take place in Yorkshire throughout 2004. This high-profile, prestigious conference will welcome the Minister for Sport & Tourism, Richard Caborn, MP and Digby Jones, Director General of the CBI to address the audience of key tourism and business representatives from the region.

The conference will very much be a review of where the tourism industry is now, what partnerships and strategic alliances have been formed, what priority actions have been delivered and, importantly, what the future for tourism in this region presents.

To put things in context, November 2002 saw the introduction of the Tourism Action Plan (TAP) produced by Yorkshire Tourist Board and Yorkshire Forward.

It articulated a strategic tourism agenda into priority actions for the development and enhancement of the tourism sector, identifying delivcerables, roles and functions within the set timescales through to June 2004.

Implementation of the of the strategic actions identified in the TAP has been under way since the end of 2002. By June 2004, plans for the future of tourism will be set in motion at a region-wide level. The Yorkshire Tourism Conference on April 28 will guel these future plans.

One of the primary actions identified within the TAP was to review roles and responsibilities within the tourism industry. That review will be completed soon and the Yorkshire Tourism Conference will provide the platform from which the review findings will be made public.

But the conference is about much more than just listening. Anyone with a financial interest in tourism in York and North Yorkshire must attend. It will afford those involved in tourism with the opportunity to get answers on the burning issues affecting their businesses.

They need to ensure that they are an important part of the strategic process in driving the region's tourism agenda forward.

Updated: 09:27 Tuesday, November 25, 2003