N.Z. TOURIST POTENTIAL

Press, Issue 29236, 21 June 1960, Page 17

N.Z. TOURIST POTENTIAL

M.P.’s Claim For Southland

(New Zeatana Press Association/ INVERCARGILL, June 20.

New Zealand’s greatest tourist potential lay in selling the Australian masses cheap “package” tours of the Southland and Otago lakes district, Mr J. R. Hanan, MP-, told the annual meeting of the Invercargill Chamber of Commerce tonight. The new Invercargill Licensing Trust hotel would be a step in the right direction. But the chief key to unlock the potential was in Invercargill airport.

All tourism was good in that it brought overseas visitors to New Zealand, he said. “But many of the rainbow hopes and fancies of our northern friends about what they would do are subject to two limitations.”

First, the tourist wished to see what could not be seen in his own country. Second, the big battalions of tourists were in the middle and lower income groups seeking cheap package tours. There was little in the North Island that could not be seen in other parts of the world, and outside the Otago and Southland lakes and fiords and the West Coast glaciers there was little in the South Island. Then, said Mr Hanan, the only big battalions of tourists capable of having cheap package tours were in Australia—thousands of moderate wage and salary earners. “Southland and Otago lakes have the most to offer at the cheapest price there is, and Australia is our market,” he said. The potential was there, said Mr Hanan, “providing T.E.A.L. does not keep up the prices for ever and we get a bit of competition in the airline business.” If full international status was some distance away for Invercargill airport, then for overseas charter aircraft as a more modest target “we should have it in the bag,” said Mr Hanan “if our public bodies and public men can give it due priority.”