Tourism Minister, Kim Howells, is heading for the US on a six-day tour to try and drum up business for the UK's tourist industry.

His trip will take in both Chicago and New York - whose airports between them accounted for nearly a quarter of US visitors to the UK in 2002 - and will involve media interviews and meetings with tourism leaders. Although the latest available figures show the UK's tourism industry recovering well from the effects of Foot and Mouth Disease and September 11, recovery in the North American market has been slower than in Western Europe and elsewhere. Figures for the first three months of 2003 show visits from the US to the UK being 14 per cent down on 2001 and 9 per cent down on 2002.

Howells said: With the summer holiday season fast approaching, now is the time to tell the US we are ready to welcome them and have much to offer. I hope I can convince North Americans that we should be top of their list when shopping for a European holiday this summer. In 2002 Britain saw a two per cent increase in visitors from the US, in contrast to the rest of Europe where the only other country to report an increase - of 0.3 per cent - was Bulgaria.

Howells' visit will pave the way for a £2m VisitBritain advertising campaign in the US, scheduled to target key gateway cities next month. Elsewhere, the minister has accused Hollywood film stars of being too frightened to take a flight to Europe.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Howells said swashbuckling heroes like Tom Cruise were more frightened about the threat of terrorism than grannies from New York. He continued: These people portray themselves as great action heroes, one would assume they would have the balls to do a simple thing like fly to Europe and set an example for the rest of the nation.