Britain's leading travel agents are still missing out on a huge market of Asian customers - one year on from a Bradford conference designed to focus their attention on the issue.

Mary Klemm, who led a Bradford University School of Management project on ethnic minorities and tourism, said today she felt little had changed in the wake of the study.

It revealed that the tourism industry in Bradford was divided along ethnic lines with Asian people reluctant to use high street agents.

The study concluded with a host of recommendations for travel operators and training providers to encourage more Asian people to work in the industry and use the agents.

Two of the UK's leading operators said they wanted to address the issue - but admitted there was more to be done.

Dr Klemm's study revealed that many Asian people in Bradford, particularly young professionals, wanted to go on package holidays.

But she said the hard sell approach in travel agencies, a lack of Asian staff, and brochures dominated by images of white people were off-putting.

Instead, Asians booked their package holidays through the internet or over the phone, the study concluded. Asian-owned travel agents tended not to provide package holidays partly due to the high cost of getting accreditation from the Association of British Travel Agents (ABTA).

Dr Klemm said travel companies lacked understanding about the Asian market with many mistakenly believing they were not interested in package holidays.

The result was a travel industry segregated along race lines, which reflected 'not racism but ignorance'.

And she said some of the blame lay with the Asian community for failing to identify the good job opportunities in the travel industry.

"There are not many industries growing at such a rapid rate in this region, so we need to know why Asian people are missing out," she said. "From the travel industry's perspective, it seems some of the major companies are stuck with some very old fashioned views of what the younger Asian market wants."

A spokesman for Thomas Cook said the firm was keen to increase Asian representation among its workforce.

"We recognise that historically the number of people from Asian backgrounds in Bradford that have applied for jobs has not been as high as we would have liked," he said.

A spokesman for major high street agent Lunn Poly admitted the firm had no programme to attract recruits from Asian backgrounds, but was keen to stress its equal opportunities policy.