VISITOR numbers at York's major tourist attractions are up.

A survey of 13 of the city's venues taking part in a Yorkshire Visitor Attraction Monitor, show that a total of 600,344 visitors saw these attractions in the five months from August to December last year compared with 576,983 in the same period the year before.

This represents an increase of around four per cent.

And January 1998 figures augur well for the current five-month period in 1998, being 12 per cent higher than the figures for January, 1997.

Every month in the survey showed an increase, apart from September when visits actually fell by six per cent, largely because of the effect on the public of the death of Princess Diana. Bad weather later in the month and reduced opening hours are also blamed for the drop.

The Attraction Monitor, organised by the Yorkshire Tourist Board's research department shows the best month was December when visits to attractions in York soared by 19 per cent.

Kim Thorpe, the Yorkshire Tourist Board's research manager, said there had always been monitoring of bedspaces in the city but until recently tourist attractions kept pace with what was happening only by making "How's business?" calls to one another.

These survey results, she said, would now provide them with a yardstick on which to continue to measure performance.

She said: "One factor that helped the visitor figures was the extension of museum exhibitions into the autumn and winter."

Sara Gott, marketing assistant at the Yorkshire Museum, said that the Carnosaur exhibition which was due to finish in the Museum Gardens in October 3 was extended to the end of this month. "It has definitely boosted our visitor figures," she said.

Another factor helping to increase the figures was the growing awareness among local residents of the attractions on offer through a Residents First campaign which allowed residents free entrance, thus sparking off word-of-mouth publicity.

A total of 34 York attractions are taking part in the next three-day Residents First event, which starts on Friday, March 6, including new participants - Bishopthorpe Palace and F1 Racing, the indoor go-karting centre in Leeman Road, York.

Jo Beckersley, spokesman for then National Railway Museum, said the number of visitors in the August to December period were up by 2.5 per cent on the previous year. "But what is wonderfully encouraging is that last month, visitor figures were up by 12 per cent on the previous January."

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