ATTRACTING TOURISTS.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 152, 30 June 1927, Page 9

ATTRACTING TOURISTS.

A PROFITABLE TRADE,

WELL WORTH ENCOURAGING,

"At the present time we are receiving about 10,000 visitors a year, who on an averago expenditure of £100 a head leave about £1,000,000 iu the Dominion." Thus said Mr. G. M. Fowlds, president of the New Zealand Tourist League in a helpful address given at the Auckland Advertising Exhibition. On the other hand, Mr. Fowlds pointed out New Zealanders who visited Australia and Europe and America disbursed about £3,500,000, so that New Zealand was losing £2,500,000 a year. There were tremendous possibilities in the tourist business, and more should be done in New Zealand to attract this lucrative business. He suggested first o£ all concentrating on Australia where there was a population of six millions. Our major publicity programme should be directed to increasing the stream of visitors from across the Tasman.

He cleared away some old-fashioned ideas about tourist traffic as being humiliating, and declared that the' money which was earned in that way had the widest circulation amongst all classes of the community, including the primary producers, the manufacturers, and those specifically engaged in it. An interesting aspect was that the tourist traffic would be a valuable stand-by for the Dominion if a depression should happen to come and injure our primary or secondary industries. After referring to the good news that

the Government was showing more interest in the development of the tourist tariff, Mr. Fowlds went on to say: "The tourist traffic should be our third great industry and surely we should be doing the most sensible tiling to more energetically develop the remarkable assets which have been provided in such a small compass in these islands. Many of those who have looked into this question are of the opinion that the advertising programme now being supplemented by the creation of a booking staff to sell tours, otherwise much of the distribution of literature and the display of films and photographs will mainly be educational and informative in a casual way. "Travel can and is being sold like other products and services and unless we in New Zealand formulate some form of personal follow-up, we shall not fully reap the benefits of the thousands of pounds we are now spending on advertising. . If we do tin's we can then hope to achieve something in the direction that a recent visitor, Sir James Barrett of Melbourne, said: 'The natural destiny of New Zealand is to become one of the chief playgrounds of the world.'"