FEARS have been raised that the region's tourism economy is suffering from a cut in marketing after new figures revealed that trips to the North-East and North Yorkshire by overseas visitors have dropped.

The latest Government figures showed the North-East and North Yorkshire welcomed 277,000 foreign holidaymakers in 2012 compared to 344,000 the previous year.

Visitors to Tees Valley dropped from 10,000 in 2011 to 7,000 last year, while the only place to buck the trend was County Durham, which attracted 23,000 overseas visitors last year, compared to 19,000 in 2011.

In County Durham, when students, business people and people visiting their relatives are added in, the number goes up to 76,000.

London accounted for more than half the visits overseas tourists made to the UK last year.

Only two of the region’s cities figured in the country’s top 50 destinations, with Newcastle ranked 15th and York coming 18th – both behind the likes of Leeds, Nottingham and Inverness.

Since 2010 the region has had to cope with cuts to funding behind the successful Passionate People, Passionate Places marketing campaign.

Bishop Auckland MP Helen Goodman, who is on Labour’s shadow culture team, said decisions by the coalition Government to scrap the regional development agency’s campaign were contributing to a difficult time for the industry.

She said: “It is no coincidence that the significant drop in tourist numbers occurred the year after that funding from One North East ended.

“This is yet more evidence that the Conservative-led government was wrong to abolish One North East and replace it with a successor body that splits our region in two.”

Melanie Sensicle, chief executive of Visit County Durham, said: “The information provided by VisitBritain focuses on UK cities large and small that represent a very diverse offer and have a host of reasons why they attract international visitors.

“These are from well-developed language learning facilities and international air and seaports, to world famous literary and cultural collections, good transport links and large ethnic communities driving the visiting friends and relations sectors.

“From this data we know that Newcastle and Durham city between them attract over 250,000 international visitors.

“The true number for the North-East will be higher when the figures for rural Durham and Northumberland are added in.”