TOURISM and business experts have been working with four luxury North-East hotels to help them target the expanding and increasingly lucrative USA tourist market.

Seaham Hall, Rockliffe Hall, Matfen Hall and Lumley Castle have come together to represent the North-East and provide American travellers with a rounded picture of luxury stays available here in the North East.

Experts from UK Trade and Investment North-East (UKTI) are working with the hotels and international trade adviser Sue Beverley, said: “UKTI carried out a piece of research to identify the top ten markets for prestigious UK hotels and suggested to the four hotels that they get together to discuss a joint marketing approach – to make the appeal stronger and benefit from pooling marketing resources.

“We also put them in touch with UKTI in New York who skyped with them and provided a list of agencies and operators for them to contact.

“As a result the group has now formed into a brand and is engaging with other operators in the North-East such as visitor attractions to do some tactical campaign marketing into the US.”

Wendy Benson of Seaham Hall explained the benefits of the new approach.

“By working together prestigious hotels can help interest visitors from the USA see the North-East as a whole as a target destination as they do with the Lake District and The Cotswolds for example,” she said.

“UKTI’s support meant that we could find out more accurately which markets to target and which parts of our offer were most attractive to US visitors.”