TOURIST INDUSTRY

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 288, 5 December 1935, Page 13

TOURIST INDUSTRY

IMPROVED METHODS.

WHAT DOMINION CAN DO.

HOTELS AND TRANSPORT.

Suggestions for improving the tourist industry in New Zealand and comparisons with tourist methods in other

countries were made at a tourist conference at The Hermitage (reports the Christchurch "Press"). Visitors to the Dominion and New Zealanders who had been overseas all gave their experiences, and spoke of improvements which could be made.

Mr. R. H. Paekwood, the engineer responsible for the building of the Waitaki dam, said that considering the smallness of the population of New Zealand, it's tourist system compared favourably with that of any other country ho had seen. In New Zealand, of course, it was impossible to build hotels costing millions of dollars, as apparently it was both possible and profitable to do in Canada, but for tlieir size and tariff charges New Zealand hotels compared more than favourably with those abroad. There were a few exceptions, of course, which did not give very good service, and it was essential that they should be improved if every tourist was to leave New Zealand satisfied and willing to persuade others to come here. Poor Standard of Plumbing. One thing in which New Zealand lagged 40 years behind the world was plumbing, said Mr. Paekwood, and New Zealand hotels were almost all many years behind modern plumbing practice in other countries. It was too much to hope that a completely modern and very costly service could be installed at once, but it was both possible and desirable to bring hotel plumbing in New Zealand at least to only ten years behind the standard found abroad.

New Zealand hotels could certainly be proud of their food, said Mr. Packwood, and this was a big asset in attracting and pleasing tourists. He gave experiences of his own with food abroad, and said that many New Zealand tourists would be disagreeably, and uncomfortably, impressed with the food at some hotels in Spain, and Italy, especially Sardinia.

The claim made for the New Zealand railways that they were the cheapest in the world seemed justilied from his experience in other countries, and he would say that, after making allowances for narrow gauge, excessive curvature, smallnees of population, and other factors, the transport they provided was exceptionally good. The same could also apply to motor transport. Courtesy To Motorists. Mr. G. T. Gillies, of Oamaru, who has just returned from a 7000-mile tour of Australia by car, appealed to New Zealand to attract more motoring tourists who should bring their own cars. If New Zealand gave the same courtesy to Australian visitors as Australians gave to persons from the Dominion, visitors should be well satisfied, he said. In Australia, any driver of a car which •bore a symbol of coming from New Zealand was forgiven anything by traffic policemen. Mr. Gillies himself had driven the wrong way in a one-way street in Sydney, just at a busy time, had given himself and _ the many cars coining in the other direction a moit exciting few seconds, and then had been scarcely admonished by a traffic policeman, because he was from New Zealand. Minor Annoyances. . Mr. R. H. Nesbitt, Australian Trade Commissioner in New Zealand, said that often the things that stayed longest in the tourist's mind were minor annoyances and irritations he had suffered, and he appealed to all connected with the tourist traffic so to arrange things for visitors that there were no such annoyances. Discussing the Australian quota of tourists for New Zpaland he said that it was not realis3d how much such tourists brought into tho country, but the amount was one that Should be taken into account before making reference to a trade balance between Australia arid New Zealand-

Mr. R. L. Wigley paid a tribute to the work of Mr. L. J. Schmitt, recently appointed manager for the Government Tourist Department, and said that complaints made in the past about tourists being sent , to the North Island rather than the South could not now be levelled in any way.