Tourist Earnings Rise By £1m To £9.7m

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30739, 1 May 1965, Page 1

Tourist Earnings Rise By £1m To £9.7m

(From Out Own Reporter)

HOKITIKA, April 30. Earnings of overseas exchange from New Zealand’s tourist industry last year had a spectacular increase of just more than £lm to a record of £9.7m. the general manager of the Tourist and Publicity Department (Mr R. S. Odell) said today. Mr Odell will address the annual conference of the South Island Publicity Association which opens in Hokitika tomorrow morning. No other industry in New Zealand could point to such a high rate of growth and it proved beyond any doubt that the country’s tourist promotion strategy overseas was soundly based, Mr Odell said. But, he said, the increases during recent years were as nothing when compared with those the department anticipated in the immediate future. The Minister in charge of Tourism (Mr Eyre) said in Wellington recently:

“We are on the verge of a tourist explosion, and the fuse has already been lit.”

There was an over-all increase of 17.4 per cent of long-staying tourists in New Zealand in 1964, as compared with 1963. The number of overseas visitors to New Zealand in 1964 was 112,610. In the last 10 years visitors from Australia had increased by 180 per cent, the United Kingdom by 160 per cent the United States by 760 per cent, and Canada by 374 per cent. It was expected that these figures would increase rapidly. The new Haast Pass highway which would be officially opened towards the end of the year would provide a highway to some of New Zealand’s most dramatic mountain, forest, lake and coastal scenery. It would be publicised abroad as one of the world’s most spectacular scenic routes and it would take its place among New Zealand’s main tourist attractions, Mr Odell said.