Confident businesses survive the recession, said Claire Morrow, chairman of Welcome To Yorkshire – formerly the Yorkshire Tourist Board.

The £30m being invested in promoting tourism across the county over the next three years by the organisation and Yorkshire Forward is a bold counter-recession strategy, intended to bolster confidence in all aspects of tourism, especially what’s known as ‘front-line hospitality’.

Tom Riordan, chief executive of Yorkshire Forward, does not believe that the end is nigh, as some doom-mongers never tire of forecasting.

“Our economy is not collapsing,” he told the biggest-ever gathering of Yorkshire tourism people – more than 1,000 of them plus special guests at the Royal Armouries in Leeds.

“With our mini-fiscal stimulus we can beat this recession, we can get through this.”

Although words such as “diversity, cultural, heritage, vibrant, contemporary,” tend to lose meaning with over-use when Yorkshire tourism is being promoted, there is a serious message underlying the hype that will be familiar to many of the 250,000 people who earn their living from 25,000 tourist businesses.

The trade is worth £6.3 billion to the Yorkshire economy every year.

“That’s bigger than Boots, bigger than British Telecom and, I am happy to say as a Leeds United supporter, 20 times bigger than Manchester United,” said Gary Verity, chief executive of Welcome To Yorkshire.

This year, with sterling weak against other currencies and people in the UK looking to economise, the opportunity is there to increase numbers of visitors from home and aboard.

Joanna Royle, marketing director of Welcome To Yorkshire, said: “We think 2009 is set to be a bumper year for tourism. One-in-five people in this country are prepared to holiday at home because they are worried about money. What we offer them has got to be money well spent.”

The promotional campaign’s two slogans – You Can Do More In Yorkshire, and A Long Weekend In Yorkshire Is Not Enough – should drive the message home on television commercials throughout the country.

But over and above the advertising campaigns on radio, television, in cinemas, at mainline London railway stations (more than 150 trains travel between Yorkshire destinations and the capital daily), in newspapers, magazines and on the internet, there are other opportunities for companies.

Don Stewart, Welcome To Yorkshire’s special projects director, heads up the Yorkshire Gold campaign to exploit opportunities from the 2012 London Olympic Games.

“There are still 250,000 contracts to be let. Whether you are a small firm or a large one, you can get something out of 2012,” he said.

Steel and cables were being supplied by Yorkshire-based industries. Many other things could be too, from toilet rolls and training facilities at the region’s 51 sports stadia, to holiday breaks for Londoners who might want to get away from the Olympics.

As though in vindication of his speech, just a couple of days later more than 17,000 fans of Leeds Rhinos and St Helens Interchange watched a cracking display of top-class Challenge Cup rugby league at Headingley, which Leeds lost by four points.

Bradford people involved in what’s called “front-line hospitality” will be glad to know that the attractive and punchy promotional dvd going round the world features Cartwright Hall, the Bronte Parsonage Museum at Haworth, Salts Mill and the National Media Museum.

The aim of Welcome To Yorkshire’s campaign – to raise the profile of the region overall and to maximise opportunities for sports, food and drink, arts, city life, heritage, family-centred activities and shopping – will only work effectively if all concerned pull together.

There was general agreement that promoting Yorkshire would serve no purpose if, for example, taxi-drivers are impolite or railway staff are unhelpful. Similarly, the 22 local authorities in Yorkshire have got to ensure that their towns and cities are well-kept and as attractive as it is possible to make them.

These measures are very important in the campaign to induce visitors to stay longer and return because they liked what they experienced. Increasing the number of return visitors is at the heart of the campaign to sustain and expand Yorkshire’s thriving tourism industry.