AUCKLAND HOTELS CRITICISED

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27563, 21 January 1955, Page 3

AUCKLAND HOTELS CRITICISED

“Just Beer Houses”

TREATMENT OF VISITING BANDS DEPLORED

(New Zealand Press Association) DUNEDIN, January 20. “Auckland hotels are just beer houses. The way they have treated bandsmen going to Auckland next month for the national championships is scandalous,” said Mr S. L. Wood, president of the Kaikorai Band, today. Mr Wood made a special flight to Auckland to investigate accommodation for the band. The committee organising the championship had alleged that the Licensed Victuallers’ Association had declined to provide accommodation for bandsmen coming from other centres.

“It is true. I flew to Auckland to see if I could arrange something better than the most unsuitable premises we have been allocated,” Mr Wood said.

“I personally called at hotels, breweries, and the Licensed Victuallers’ Association, but they would do nothing. “A well-known hotel in Auckland, which has two floors of rooms locked, would not give us any of them. They said it would not pay them to open the floor,” he said.

The band would have to pay £lOOO for the journey to Auckland and return, said Mr Wood. Three other conferences would be held in Auckland during the band contest, and hotels seemed to prefer these groups to bandsmen.

“The committee controlling the contest in Auckland must also share the blame for not having taken accommodation facilities into consideration earlier,” he said.

The Kaikorai Band would now stay in a private hotel. A spokesman for the St. Kilda Band said it had encountered similar trouble, arid it had been amazed to hear that the hotel managers had “let them down” after promising accommodation.