The Man Who Pays His Way: Home thoughts from abroad

Never mind hip-replacement operations – the people responsible for attracting tourists to Britain have a much tougher task in calculating the worth of their work. But the Government will be relieved to learn that the British Tourist Authority (BTA) is one public body in which its targets are being exceeded with ease.

My experience with the National Health Service has thankfully been limited to the sort of minor repairs associated with bicycle prangs. But I venture that counting the number of people awaiting treatment should not unduly tax the average hospital porter armed with a pocket calculator. Yet the Audit Commission this week found that 14 out of 15 hospital waiting lists are wrong.

The task facing the BTA is far tougher. To meet its target set by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, it has to show that journalists are being nice to Britain.

No such thing as bad publicity? That's not the view of the Culture Secretary, Tessa Jowell. Her department has set a target of 3.7 for the BTA.

Three-point-seven what, you may ask? The figure measures the quality of coverage in newspapers, magazines and websites. Each story is assessed according to "how attractive it made Britain appear to potential visitors", from a maximum of 5.0. Rejoice: in the first six months of this financial year, journalists collectively awarded the UK a score of 3.94.

Perhaps they just love our wonderful public transport (see Warning of the Week, below). But those who subscribe to the public relations theory that you should not read stories, just measure the column inches, will be disappointed. Yesterday I swept the online travel sections of the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Sydney Morning Herald, without finding a mention of the UK.

¿ To make life easy for any foreign tourist board sending back scores to their own governments in order to justify their existences, here are the numbers to scribble down from today's travel section, and the bonus Latin American supplement that comes with it: Australia 4, Mexico 3, New Mexico 2, Guatemala 1, Panama minus 1.

¿ Cynical readers might take the view that calculating how well a story in a foreign newspaper reflects Britain is only one remove from black magic. Could the practice, perhaps, even be subject to the kind of "widespread inaccuracy" that characterises hospital waiting lists, in the view of the Audit Commission. No one would accuse the fine folk at the British Tourist Authority of fiddling the figures. But how do they do it: conducting focus groups with prospective Icelandic tourists in order to assess the precise value of a story about Stratford-upon-Avon to tourism jobs in Britain (not least, the assessors' own)?

Hang on; the tourism authority has just announced some financial figures that will change the sceptics' tune.

The BTA's public relations team says the "BTA's public relations team boosted international coverage of the country by 35 per cent". These masters of spin "increased the estimated value of the coverage from £209.1m to £285.3m, double the amount for the whole of the preceding year". How marvellous that the figure can be so accurately computed, and how splendid that foreign visitors, inspired by that 3.94 out of 5 score, are flocking to Britain. The authority predicts that this year both inbound visits and spending will increase by between 3 and 4 per cent. Just in case that target is not met, the authority warns that "market intelligence from BTA's overseas offices suggests that global economic and political developments may affect demand for travel from some markets".

¿ Anyone inspired by Deborah Ross's story, which awards Sydney four out of five, may be pleased to learn that, from this winter, there will be a new option for reaching Australia's largest city. Three years ago, Austravel (0870 166 2070, www.austravel.com) abandoned its long-established Britannia charter flights to Australia from Gatwick and Manchester.

Intense competition between scheduled airlines had forced low-season fares below £500 return, rendering the operation unviable. Yet over Christmas the flights made lots of money. As anyone who has tried to book a flight to Sydney in the third week of December will know, demand outstrips supply, with predictable results: fares rise to well over £1,000. So next winter, to cover the festive season, Austravel is offering a series of flights between Gatwick and Sydney using a "classic" Boeing 747 belonging to European Air Charter. Regular readers will know that "classic" means "old". The Jumbo was built about a quarter-century ago, but is impeccable condition; it used to be flown by BA. And the fares are unbeatable: for a peak-season fare of £999 return, economy passengers will get the same amount of legroom as on British Airways, plus free meals and drinks. At the front, a business-class cabin is on offer for a modest premium.

The plane will stop only once en route, at Colombo in Sri Lanka. Passengers will not be allowed to join or leave, which may comfort those of a sensitive disposition who recall the scenes at the airport in 2001 when half of SriLankan Airlines' fleet was destroyed by a terrorist attack.

Strangely, Austravel is shy about the word "charter". With spin that would score a 3.94 at the BTA, the service is called "value flights".

¿ "Value flights" used to be the preserve of British Air Ferries. In the early Eighties, the only cheap scheduled flight to continental Europe was a BAF Viscount that hopped between Southend and Ostend. The Belgian resort (which scores at least a 4.0 on this column's rather wobbly ratings) soon fell off the flight map. From May Day it will once again be accessible from Essex, thanks to a new Ryanair link from Stansted (0.5).

Yet even though Ostend is a fine destination in its own right, the Irish airline cannot resist calling it something else. Residents of Bruges (4.5) may be surprised to learn that, on planet Ryanair, their lovely city now has an airport.