Tour de Yorkshire organisers have not ruled out Chris Froome competing in next year's extended four-day race.

Barnsley, Halifax, Ilkley and Richmond were announced as new hosts for either a stage's start or finish for 2018 at a press conference held by Welcome to Yorkshire and Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO) in Leeds on Wednesday.

Previous host venues Beverley, Doncaster, Leeds and Scarborough were also confirmed, while Welcome to Yorkshire chief executive Sir Gary Verity has targeted Froome, Mark Cavendish and Marcel Kittel to head a world-class field.

"People are putting together their schedules for 2018 now," said Verity. "But the names we clearly want to attract are the world's best sprinters in Kittel and Cavendish and also the man of the moment – we want to get Chris Froome to ride the race.

"I think Chris would like to come and ride the Tour de Yorkshire and we would love to have him, so hopefully when the bosses at Team Sky are putting the schedules together this will fit well."

The Tour de Yorkshire was first held in 2015 after Yorkshire's successful hosting of the Tour de France's Grand Depart the previous year and has rapidly become one of the best attended races on the cycling calendar.

The eight locations announced on Wednesday are a result of the men's race (May 3-6) recently being extended from three days to four and the women's race (May 3-4) becoming a two-day event.

According to the organisers, more than two million spectators watched last year's races from the roadside, the action was broadcast live in 180 countries and it generated £64million for the local economy.

With the 2019 Road World Championships coming to the county, Yorkshire's status as a cycling hotbed was confirmed by the sport's governing body the UCI last week when the county was made one of the eight new "UCI bike regions".

But Verity discounted the men's race, which currently holds a 2.1 UCI Europe Tour classification, being further extended in the near future.

"I don't know about the long term, but certainly for me, for the next 10 years, I think it works well as a four-day race," he said.

"You've got some balance in there. For the men's edition you can do two flat stages and two hilly stages and a two-stage, two-day race for the women I think is exactly right.

"So I'm really happy with the balance of the race and the duration. There's other ways we can make it more interesting and grow it with a bigger global appeal and we look forward to doing that over the next few years."

The full race route - with exact start and finish locations, distances and profiles - will be unveiled on December 5.

Verity added: "It's much more than just a bike race. You can see the millions of people that come out, the way they do the land art - communities come together to decorate their suburbs, their towns, their villages.

"Schools embrace it, this is really about social change. It's about bringing people together. At the heart of it there is a bike race, but this is about Yorkshire pride."

Belgian rider Serge Pauwels won this year's men's race, with Yorkshire's Lizzie Deignan taking the women's prize.