TOURISM bosses will ditch County Durham’s traditional title when promoting the area to visitors.

County Durham – the only part of England to use the word county before its place name – will be promoted simply as Durham as part of a £35,000 rebranding.

County Durham Tourism Partnership said the change, which follows lengthy research into public perceptions of the area, will help capture a bigger share of the visitor economy.

The shortened name will appear on adverts and other promotional material targeting potential tourists across the UK, but the traditional title will still be used on the county’s road signs and street maps.

Melanie Sensicle, the chief executive of County Durham Tourism Partnership, said research over the past two years suggested that Durham was “a clear, coherent and compelling” brand.

She said: “Our job is to get people to visit here and spend money, and we have done quite a bit of work on what consumers think about Durham.

“We need to play to our strengths to make sure that potential visitors want to come to County Durham.

“The research shows that visitors already feel very positive about Durham. They know where Durham is and we can use that to grab their attention.

“Once we get people to the county, we can show them everything we have to offer, but if we cannot get them here in the first place, then we cannot do that.

“We are leading with our strongest card.”

The last available figures suggest that the tourism industry was worth £650m to County Durham’s economy in 2007 and supported 13,000 jobs.

However, the area still languishes close to the bottom of the national tourist league table and is outperformed by places such as Lincolnshire and Cheshire.

One of the common misconceptions uncovered by researchers was that County Durham was in Northern Ireland.

The partnership said the change supported existing tourism brands, such as the Durham Dales and Durham Heritage Coast, and some of the county’s most high-profile institutions, including Durham Cathedral and Durham University.

The £35,000 being spent on the project includes the creation of a consistent typeface and colour scheme for promotional material, which will be tried out before focus groups of potential visitors from Leeds, London and Glasgow.

Ms Sensicle said: “It is a modest cost really for a significant amount of work.”