Tourist Publicity

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29772, 15 March 1962, Page 3

Tourist Publicity

Sir, —With much interest I read of a proposed tourist “Task Force” to visit Australia, generally selling New Zealand tourism. I sincerely hope that, should this excellent idea come about, the task force will pay a visit, and report on the New Zealand Government Tourist Bureau in Sydney. Often I have taken Australian friends into the bureau intending to whet their “touring appetites” with some informative and picturesque sales talk from someone who presumably should have known his business. Invariably after a quar-ter-hour wait, pamphlets are thrust at one, questions answered by a finger tapped on the pamphlets—“ All you want to know is in there.” Once I asked Auckland’s exact location. “About halfway up the North Island on the West Coast”! Many tourists have been .told the interisland ferry goes from Wellington to Christchurch! What would one think of Lyttelton at 7 a.m., as the “City of the Plains”? As one of the many New Zealanders living in Sydney, I do not like to see this important facet of muchneeded public relations in Australia so abused.—Yours, 'ANGELA M. HARMAN.

March 1, 1962. [“I am naturally concerned to read the remarks in the above letter,” said Mr K. B. Longmore, general manager of the Tourist and Publicity Department. “Overseas staff have been appointed to provide clients with good travel information and to act as emissaries of New Zealand. There is insufficient detail in the letter on which to institute inquiries, but I would advise in any similar case that the client should ask at the time to interview the local manager or officer in charge. If any case of indifference or discourtesy is proven, the department will not hesitate in returning the officer responsible to New Zealand. However, in justice to the department’s officers in Sydney and Melbourne, I would add that complaints of this nature are extremely rare and that the steady increase in sales by these officers indicates that their standard is a high one in the competitive Australian travel world.”]