More hard work lies ahead for tourism workers seeking to woo transatlantic tourists back to York.

The extent of the misconceptions being spread about foot and mouth, flooding and other issues in the United States became apparent when a group of American travel agents came to York this weekend.

"Soggy pastures where all things crash and burn" is a headline which recently appeared in the New York Times to describe the state of Britain.

The article, accompanied by pictures of lambs going to slaughter, the train crash at Great Heck, and a flooded house in Kent, is far from the worst of it.

Airlines are said to be offering refunds on tickets to London, and one couple cancelled a world cruise because it terminated at Southampton.

The group of travel agents from California and Texas said the cancellations were accompanied by a surge in bookings for alternative destinations such as Italy and Spain.

Jenny Casperson, director of Connoisseur Travel, York, spent the weekend entertaining the group.

She said: "We hope they will go back and say Britain is open for business, because they are having trouble persuading their clients at the moment.

"They've muddled up foot and mouth with BSE and one of the hotels in London is getting absolutely fed up of people asking, 'What's the fish?'"

Joanna Heathcote, a British woman who now lives in Los Angeles and promotes British hotels to the Americans, said: "Americans think they're going to have horrible sights of burning cattle, that it isn't safe to eat the food, and that they can't go to the countryside at all because nobody's explained it's only the footpaths that are off limits."

Coralie Collins, president of John Gibson Travel, California, said: "I've had a number of people ask me if I think it's safe to come."

Carol Minker, of Sanders Travel Centre, Forth Worth, Texas, said: "I think I'm a sophisticated traveller, but before I left for this trip I had a hamburger because I thought I wasn't going to be able to eat meat."

The picture gets more depressing when Charles de L'Arbre, president of Santa Barbara Travel, explains that most of his clients want culture, hotels, and the experience of driving around Britain, all of which are unaffected by the foot and mouth crisis.

Jenny said: "We're going to have to spend an awful lot of money in the US promoting Britain now."

Updated: 11:34 Monday, April 30, 2001