N.Z. TOURIST OFFICERS

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29108, 21 January 1960, Page 11

N.Z. TOURIST OFFICERS

Overseas Travel For Experience

Many executives in the Dominion’s travel industry regularly went overseas to keep themselves abreast with trends in tourism, said toe manager of the Government Tourist Bureau in Christchurch (Mr W. A. Pickford) yesterday. Mr Pickford was commenting on a report printed in “The Press” in which an American visitor, Mr S. S. Steinhauser, a member of a travel organisation in Honolulu, suggested that New Zealand travel officials should travel overseas frequently to keep up to date with current trends. “Mr Steinhauser himself is travelling through the Dominion for this purpose,” said Mr Pickford. “It is widely recognised throughout the travel Industry as being a necessary prerequisite to efficient handling of the travelling public’s requirements.”

The Government Tourist Bureau, primarily concerned with handling overseas visitors travelling through New Zealand, has made it a policy for many years to send its staff to resorts, said Mr Pickford. “As far as overseas trends are concerned the department has five overseas offices. Senior officers, often men of long experience are required to travel extensively in their areas and report new developments to the department,” he said. One executive had only recently returned from a visit to Europe and Russia.

“These visits by government officers and more of private firms have enabled our industry in New Zealand to keep abreast with overseas developments (bearing in mind the country’s size and population) and in some cases to surpass what is done overseas. “An instance is the development by Mr Harry Wigley, another widely-travelled man, of tourist flights over alpine regions with ski landings on snowfields at high altitudes,” said Mr Pickford.