City chief visits China to promote tourism

The chief executive of York Council has travelled to China to help promote the city.

The authority says that following the visit officials from China have made a commitment to work with York on a range of topics, including promoting its visitor attractions and business opportunities.

Council chief Kersten England was a keynote speaker at an international heritage conference in the town of Zhouzhuang.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

The British Council-funded trip was an opportunity for York to raise its international profile at the China-UK Cultural Heritage event.

UK representatives joined Chinese policy-makers, scholars and practitioners to exchange their experience in practice, government policy-making and involving young people in heritage protection.

Coun Sonja Crisp, cabinet member for leisure, culture and social inclusion, said: “York’s heritage plays an integral part in boosting our tourism so it was an honour for the city to be represented at this heritage conference.

“I’m sure this experience will give us so much knowledge about how other cities use their heritage to support tourism.”

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Ms England said: “York has a unique heritage and can trace its history back to AD71 when the Roman’s conquered and named York Eboracum.

“Today, 2000 years on, York is still a world-class city which supports more than 80,000 jobs, 200,000 residents, 20,000 students and 7.1 million visitors.

“Whilst this visit was an ideal opportunity to compare and contrast culture and heritage and learn from best practice from across the world, I also used this visit as an opportunity to meet universities and businesses to raise York’s international profile.

“Across Yorkshire we have the second highest concentration of Chinese students and are looking to build on this.”

Discussions will now take place between York and Shanghai for Chinese officials to visit the UK.

Related topics: