VisitBritain, the national tourism marketing agency, has drawn up a plan to deal with either a flu outbreak in birds, or an outbreak of the virus among people.

Suzanne Lockhart, tourism officer with Oxford City Council, said: "VisitBritain has been monitoring the situation for some time and has an action plan for dealing with an outbreak of either avian or human flu.

"Obviously, if Oxford was to be affected, we would liaise closely with VisitBritain and take advice from their action plan."

The plan, which has been used before with the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, which had a massive impact on tourism, aims to ensure that the possible effects on the visitor economy are understood and kept on the national agenda.

The news came as it was revealed spending by international visitors in Oxfordshire rose by £26m in 2004, from £185m to £211m, according to new figures published by the Office for National Statistics.

The figures also show that overseas residents made 568,000 visits to Oxfordshire in 2004, against 484,000 the previous year. Tourism officials fear those figures could nosedive if bird flu becomes a problem on the scale of the foot-and-mouth outbreak in 2002.

The statistics are the highest since being devastated by a combination of the 9/11 disaster, foot-and-mouth and the Sars epidemic.

The growing income from overseas visitors could mean the industry would be hit hard by any travel restrictions.

Ms Lockhart said: "As we have seen from other scares such as Sars and the London bombings, people are quite resilient, but of course if travel is restricted we will concentrate on the domestic market."

The VisitBritain blueprint has been developed in consultation with the Tourism Industry Emergency Response Group, the British Tourism Development Committee, and various Government departments.

VistBritain spokesman Sian Brenchley said: "Under the plan we discuss how to best deal with the situation, then feed back to the regions."