Tina Starzecki is a lucky woman. Or should that be canny? In the seven hours she took to fly over the Atlantic to New York yesterday, the value of the pound dropped below $1.50 for the first time since the summer of 2002.

But the slump in value, prompted by Mervyn King’s announcement that the British economy was in a far worse shape than previously thought, had little impact on her shopping plans. Ms Starzecki had the foresight to buy her dollars when she booked her trip.

“I changed my money in July and I got about $1.96 to the pound, which is pretty good isn’t it?” Ms Starzecki, from Middlesex, said as she stood with her daughter in the visitor centre of Macy’s to collect her free 11 per cent tourist discount card. “We only landed two hours ago and we’ve come straight out to do some Christmas shopping.”

Other British tourists were less fortunate. Sandy Foxon bought some of her US dollars in May for about $1.90 to the pound. But the rest of her spending money will take a hit from the new exchange rate. “I changed some of it before we knew we were coming,” she said, as she prepared to scour Macy’s for clothes. “We just started shopping today and we’re going tomorrow, but I’m heading down to Canal Street.” A wise move with a weak pound — Canal Street in Manhattan is well known for bargain handbags.

Julia Keeble, from Cambridge, was another shopper with foresight. “I got $1,000 for £606 when I exchanged it in May. But I would have come to New York anyway, not just because the exchange rate has been so good.”

Ms Keeble and Ms Starzecki are likely to be among the last remaining British tourists to have done well out of the dollar, which has strengthened significantly against the pound as Britain began to slide into recession. Few British tourists in New York yesterday would have swapped their money at such a generous exchange rate. This time last year a pound was worth $2.

Even after stripping out the increase in the dollar-pound exchange rate — known in the City as the cable rate — many goods are still much cheaper in the US, as retailers struggle to boost sales in one of the worst economic crises since the Great Depression.

Macy’s, which says that it is the biggest department store in the world, covering an entire block on 34th Street in Manhattan, is offering steep discounts on many goods including clothing. Lord & Taylor, a House of Fraser-style department store in Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, is trying to encourage tourists to spend with a 15 per cent Travelers Savings voucher to be used against “almost everything”.

Farther up Fifth Avenue, in Best Buy, the electronics chain, shoppers could buy the new 8GB iPod Touch second generation for $229.99 plus 8 per cent tax, or the Apple 1GB iPod Shuffle (purple) for $49.99 plus tax.

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