THE Yankee dollar is vital to Kent’s billion-pound tourism industry. Yet our attractions have seen fewer dollars flowing into the coffers in recent years.

9/11 damaged American confidence in flying. There were other scares such as BSE and Foot and Mouth. The plunging value of the dollar against the pound was great for families going to Florida but terrible for Americans thinking about a UK vacation.

The American market is vast, but not as vast as it may seem. Perhaps surprisingly, only 20 per cent of Americans have passports and the average annual vacation for employees is just 10 working days. Despite these hurdles, there are some encouraging signs.

Around 3.6 million Americans visited the UK last year, although tourist chiefs aim to raise this to four million. The dollar is strengthening. A common, if rather different, language is still a powerful attraction.

And a desire to trace their roots might persuade many Americans to come to the UK in 2007. Tourist chiefs are pinning their hopes on the 400th anniversary of the first settling of Virginia by fortune-hunters and adventurers from Kent, London and eastern England.

That of course led to the county’s connection with Pocahontas and the legends and myths that have built up around her.

Other links abound. Leeds Castle, for example, was owned by the Culpeper family who were given five million acres of Virginia and supplied a governor – Thomas Culpeper – in the 1680s.

A recent mission to the States talked up all these links in an attempt to woo more package tours and independent travellers to Kent. Heritage scores. Yet few tour operators in New York were aware of Jamestown 2007. Fewer had considered a tour based in Kent.

Few American know where Kent is, but mention Canterbury Cathedral and the White Cliffs of Dover, and they are with you. It needs a massive marketing effort to put Kent on the map as a standalone vacation destination.

It’s a hard task and an expensive one, but at least our most enterprising tourist businesses are giving it a go.

The £1,200 many paid to join a recent Kent Tourism Alliance trade mission to the States will be money well spent if it persuades more Americans to realise the joys of coming over the Pond and investing in the Garden of England.