The inaugural Brand USA Travel Week got under way on Monday (9 September), designed to connect US suppliers with key buyers from across Europe.

Opening the session, Thompson said Brand USA was “so confident this is the right thing for the right market, that we’re going to be doing it for the next six years”.

Brand USA Travel Week will return to London in 2020 before heading to Germany for 2021. It will return to the UK in 2022, with France hosting in 2023. It will host the bash again in 2024 before the Netherlands takes over in 2025.

The announcement came as Thompson hailed a successful year last year for tourist numbers to the US, with the UK remaining the number one market in Europe.

Some 4.6 million Brits visited the US in 2018, which Thompson said was the country’s second highest annual visitation from the UK. Second was Germany with two million, France at 1.7 million, Italy at one million and Spain 876,000.

Thompson said the US had impressive airlift from Europe to the US, with Heathrow providing the greatest number of flights per week – 747 - compared with the next highest, Paris, which has 341 flights per week.

However, Thompson said Brand USA was keen to continue increasing its European airlift.

“We have got significant airlift out of Europe and this is something we’re going to keep focused on.

“For example, a 1% increase in load factor would equate to an additional 860,000 passengers.”