Revised Tariffs Would Allow Hotels To Meet Tourists’ Needs

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27406, 20 July 1954, Page 3

Revised Tariffs Would Allow Hotels To Meet Tourists’ Needs

(From Pur Own Reporter)

TIMARU, July 19. Revision of hotel tariff scales in New Zealand to allow proprietors to provide top class service is urged by Mr John Crate, a hotelkeeper of Timaru, who recently returned from a fiyeweeks’ visit to the main centres of tne United States. Under the present system of controlled tariffs it was impossible to provide the service demanded by tourists, especially Americans, he Sa Jreedom to charge according to services given would allow hotelkeepers to include in menus items such as turkey, inch-thick steaks, oysters, lobster, and many other delicacies that tourists expected to have served; it would enable them to employ extra porters to minister to the wants or guests; services such as shoe-cleaning could be given. Under the present system such things were economically imP °Charges for rooms in hotels he had visited in America ran as high as 13$ dollars, and this did not include meals, said Mr Crate. A steak in -the hotel restaurant cost 5.95 dollars (about £2 2s). “You can, of course, go down the street to the corner cafe and get an equally good steak for 2.50 dollars, but you don’t get the service and you don t get the fine, fashionable surroundings. “If a guest in one of these hotels wants a packet of cigarettes it is brought to him on a tray and costs 3U cents. You tip the porter 10 cents ana the cigarettes have cost you 40 cents (about 2s lOd). In a shop or from a machine the same cigarettes will cost 25 cents, but that way you don t get the packet opened for you, and you don’t have a lighter held for you. “There are . iany scales of charges in America, and all of them are ruled by the patrons. If someone does not feel like paying five dollars 95 cents for a steak, he doesn’t have to. There

are plenty of other hotels and restaurants. ~ , , ... “And the same could be done m New Zealand. If the tourists want the service to which they are accustomed they should be allowed to have it, and the hotelkeeper should be allowed to provide it and charge for it. At present he cannot; if ne did he would only lose money and be out of business.” , , . . . In San Francisco he had been asked by the Deputy Travel Commissioner of the New Zealand Government Travel Bureau, Mr Arthur Feslier, what he considered could be done to promote tourist traffic to New Zealand. “I told him that under the present system my job as a hotelkeeper seemed to be to make the American tourist unhappy,” Mr Crate said. “New Zealand has a chance to earn thousands of dollars each year from American tourists, but some drastic changes in hotel tariffs will have to be made before that comes about. Little Publicity Publicity about New Zealand was hard to find in the United States, said Mr Crate. In the air terminals of the main cities there was usually a huge mural map showing the air routes ot the world. “But I only saw one which showed New Zealand.’’ In the square in which New York s air terminal was built there was a huge neon sign showing a kangaroo hopping from America to Australia, with the words: “Fly to Australia. “But I didn’t see even a small sign showing the kiwi and the words Fly to New Zealand.” That hurt. “In this country there are Government tourist hotels which lose £72,000 in two years’ operations, and yet we . cannot have a neon sign in New York : telling Americans to come to our i country.”