HOPES are high that North Yorkshire will benefit from a 'staycation' boom after lockdown as visitors flock to a tourism website.

Welcome to Yorkshire has revealed some very encouraging data, suggesting interest in the county as a place to visit has dramatically increased as the UK re-emerges from lockdown.

In the month of May, yorkshire.com saw traffic increase by 47 per cent compared to April with 91 per cent of visitors clicking on the website for the first time.

Traffic to members’ listing pages saw an increase of 45 per cent with links directly to member websites also up by 42 per cent.

In the last few weeks the decision to rebrand the organisation’s membership social media feeds, to have a greater focus on industry specific news, has paid off with visitors turning to Industry.yorkshire.com for information and guidance on Covid-19 specific related content.

The most popular pages visited related to a series of ‘tourism recovery plan’ webinars which were oversubscribed on each occasion.

This positive news for Yorkshire’s visitor economy comes ahead of the tourism organisation’s decision to release a recovery plan for the region under the banner of Reopen, Recover and Rebuild.

Welcome to Yorkshire chief executive James Mason said “I have made no secret about the fact that we have so much digital potential going forward and this can provide valuable insight for the industry and key decision makers.

"We saw a big volume of organic impressions across our social accounts in April when lockdown really kicked in reaching 4,108,503 accounts in April alone, up by 24 per cent compared to March.

"Our creative and digital team, in fact the whole organisation, has worked non-stop since Covid-19 struck.

"Our aim was to lead from the front with engaging, yet important, information for the industry.

"I think these statistics prove more than ever that Welcome to Yorkshire is a viable proposition, but more importantly has a huge part to play in the region’s recovery, both as an economy and tourist destination.

"The suggestion is that the UK ‘staycation’ market is really set to boom.”

Welcome to Yorkshire has also seen huge increases in their social media engagement over the last six weeks.