ATTRACTING TOURISTS

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29067, 2 December 1959, Page 19

ATTRACTING TOURISTS

Austrian Offers Suggestions A, n overseas visitor who yesterday morning had read with a Pp a ead ing article in yie Press” on developing tourist trade found himself walking past the Christchurch Press Company’s building last evening. He decided to call in and offer his views on the subject. Mr Erik von Kuehn elt-Leddihn, from Austria, was on familiar ground in the reporters’ room, for he is a free-lance journalist, and in his own country has published several novels in German. Mr Kuehnelt-Leddihn, who speaks fluent English, is making his second trip round the world gathering material for articles and lectures on the Englishspeaking countries. He has come from Austria by way of the United States to visit New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa.

Speaking as a tourist, he said he was startled to find that he could not drink wine or beer with his meal at a restaurant. He thought it would be better if accommodation and dining tariffs at hotels were separate, as most tourists liked to leave their hotel and dine out of an evening at a restaurant, especially as hotel dining hours here were “much too early” in the evening. Mr Kuehnelt-Leddihn also had some comments on the subject of meals and cooking. Hotel Cooking

The quality of hotel cooking could be improved, and certainly the making of the coffee. “You make a very good tea, better than we do in Austria, -but the coffee, unfortunately, is sometimes well nigh undrinkable,” he said. “For heaven’s sake, don’t put cooked milk in your coffee—it must be fresh.” The New Zealand custom of early-morning tea was “excellent,” Mr Kuehnelt-Liddihn said. “I think you should keep on with it. We in Europe should certainly copy it.” Reverting to hotels, he considered the custom of requiring guests to pay part of the tariff in advance was bad from a tourist point of view. It left the tourist with the impression that the hotel people thought he might run away without paying his board. But he liked the free use of a telephone in New Zealand hotels.

“Charging for hotel telephone calls is a European racket,” he said. New Zealand’s laws about closing of shops in the week-ends were too inflexible from the point of view of encouraging visitors, he said. To cater for a tourist trade required a certain amount of flexibility in opening shops for tourists to buy goods—“and the American tourists who arrive in Auckland on the weekend would like to buy all sorts of things,” Mr Kuehnelt-Leddihn said. “And if you take them to Rotorua, for heaven’s sake have reclining seats in your longdistance coaches.”

Finally, New Zealand could have “an enormous magnetism” for members of the wealthy classes in Europe who were passionately fond of hunting. “You should advertise your hunting and shooting throughout Europe in a big way,” Mr KuehneltLeddihn said.