Tourism officials are launching the first Scotland in Toronto Week in an attempt to woo tens of thousands of Scots descendants back home.

The inaugural event, taking place next week, will tap into the huge potential of the Scottish diaspora in Canada and is designed to encourage business and investment links between the two countries while spreading the word about Homecoming 2009, a celebration of the 250th anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns.

Canada is Scotland's fifth- biggest tourism market, providing 160,000 visitors a year, worth around £90m to the economy, but VisitScotland wants to increase that by 50%.

A team from VisitScotland will stage a range of consumer and business events between Tuesday and Friday, three days before Scotland Week - formerly known as Tartan Week - gets under way in New York.

Around £60,000 will be spent on the four-day campaign, which is hoped to help bring tens of thousands of visitors to Scotland in the next two years.

Ancestral tourism will be promoted, with staff to help with information about genealogical searching and places of interest. Scotland as the home of golf will feature heavily as wealthy Canadian tourists are targeted. Clan chiefs Donald MacLaren and Jamie Semple will act as ambassadors, giving media interviews on the history of clans and their links to Canada.

The 10th Annual Tartan Day Parade in Manhattan takes place on April 5, with Scots-born New York Giants Superbowl kicker Lawrence Tynes heading the procession up Sixth Avenue. However, VisitScotland is also taking the campaign across the border for the first time to encourage Canadians of Scottish descent to visit Scotland.

There are more than 1.5 million Scots in Ontario, which VisitScotland feels should be an opportunity to create more links between the countries.

Peter Lederer, chairman of VisitScotland, said: "Tartan Day was decreed by the US Congress and we turned it into Tartan Week. Having done that for a few years where it has been successful we decided there was an opportunity to take it further.

"It is not only about tourism, although that is very important. We hope to engage with the business community and develop links to encourage investment in Scotland. I know the Canadian market well, having lived there for 12 years and the Scottish diaspora is important.

"We have never really cracked that diaspora and we need to reach them on a level that can lever it into more visits.

"Although history is an important area for tourism, there is also a lot of interest in modern Scotland. People are interested in the new parliament and political developments and what is going on in Scotland."