TOURIST TRAFFIC.

Press, Volume LXIX, Issue 20828, 11 April 1933, Page 14

TOURIST TRAFFIC.

IMPORTANCE TO THE DOMINION. MR L. J. SCHMITT'S VIEWS. Very interesting remarks on the future of the tourist traffic from Australia to New Zealand and of r the possibilities in store for the Dominion, with the full development of the traffic, were made yesterday by Mr L. J. Schmitt, Trade and Tourist Commissioner for New Zealand in Australia. "Before I leave Christchurch," said Mr Schmitt, "I should like to suggest to the residents that they could assist the Dominion greatly by taking it upon themselves to communicate with some person or persons in Australia, and suggest to them that their next holiday might . be spent in New Zealand. I am sure . that there are tens of thousands of . New Zealanders who have intimate . friends on the other side of the Tas- - man, and if my suggestion were adopted good results might reasonably be expected to follow. In other words each individual in New . Zealand could make himself responsible for the encouragement of . overseas visitors to the Dominion. Valuable Revenue. "If each person in New Zealand could induce a tourist to come to the Dominion," Mr Schmitt continued, "it would mean that the revenue collected by the country through this means would be sufficient to pay the wages of one adult for each tourist for nearly three months. I am anxious to enlist the help of everybody in this direction." Discussing the tourist business in general, Mr Schmitt explained that it was not a directly competitive business; rather it was a co-opera-tive system. For that reason it was essential that all countries and all persons associated in any way with the business should be 100 per cent, efficient. The satisfied tourist who, perhaps, had visited the East last year, and been well treated and well looked after, would have created in him a desire to travel " again, and might next year come to New Zealand. "In other words," said Mr Schmitt, "the New Zealand Government Tourist Department realises that, once a taste for travel has been given, New Zealand is likely to receive its share of the business. If the question of competition really does arise, then New Zealand has more to offer in a limited space, and for a limited time than any other country." The Mdney Expended. In the tourist bureaux at Sydney and Melbourne they had found, continued Mr Schmitt, that the money spent by a tourist was usually expended in the following proportions:—3s to 40 per cent, to shipping companies; 25 to 30 per cent, to hotels and accommodation houses; 15 to 20 per cent, to transport organisations, such as the railways and bus lines; and 5 to 10 per cent, to sundries. "The revenue from tourists is ;not, of course, by any means all profit," he went "but it is a most valuable turnover,! and is usually additional if it coines from outside the Dominion. Particularly is it useful in helping to maintain the staffs

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