A TOURIST board is investing an extra £80,000 to entice visitors to the region after last month's floods.

Yorkshire Tourist Board said tourists were put off visiting the county, believing that flooding had affected the area more than it had.

The funding from the board, working with development agency Yorkshire Forward, will boost the £1.6m already being invested in marketing the region.

A national advertising campaign will build on its current, highly successful campaign, Make Yorkshire Yours, which generated £42m for Yorkshire's tourism industry last year.

Images of York Minster, Whitby, the Yorkshire Dales and the North York Moors will be used to attract tourists.

The board's marketing director, Joanna Royle, said: "Although the weather caused little disruption to the vast majority of Yorkshire's tourism product, there is a danger that the perception that Yorkshire was closed due to flooding resulted in unnecessary cancellations in areas totally unaffected."

Andy Tordoff, from Yorkshire Forward, said: "Tourism is an important economic driver for Yorkshire and the Humber region, earning in excess of £4.1bn for the regional economy annually.

"We have already created a £5m relief fund to help companies striving to get their businesses fully operational following the floods."

Joan Lovejoy, from the Tourism Association North Yorkshire group, said attractions hit by flooding had recovered quickly.

She said: "I think it has had an effect in that we have had stories from our tourist association members of cancellations because of it and people ringing up to cancel bookings for a few months' time, even though there is no flooding now.

"For the people who were affected, it was bad, but it went down very very quickly.

"We are saying to visitors 'We are not flooded. Everything is up and running as normal. Please come'."

Up to 165,000 people are employed in the industry in Yorkshire and the Humber, and the tourist board's goal is to increase the value of tourism earnings to £5.9bn by 2010.

The integrated autumn campaign will include national press and online advertising, marketing with other Yorkshire companies and PR activity targeting the travel media