Overseas Hotels ‘Cheaper, Better11

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30857, 16 September 1965, Page 6

Overseas Hotels ‘Cheaper, Better 11

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, September 15. Three months’ overseas travel through 22 countries and 37,000 miles, with stops at 35 hotels, has convinced an Auckland man that New Zealand hotels are among the most expensive in the world.

Mr R. M. Barker, secretary of the New Zealand Master Grocers' Federation, recently took a party of 27 softgoods retailers around the world to see how the rest of the world “lives and plays.” He found hotels in other parts of the world cheaper and the conditions often better. The cost of the trip for each person, apart from meals in the United States, was £726. After seeing retailers the world over, Mr Barker thinks the most successful are volume traders, mass merchandisers who “pile it up high and sell it quick. “It looks an absolute shambles at times, but these re-1

tailers would have the highest sales per square foot of floor space,” he said. “With goods displayed as they are, the shop assistant is doing less and less and the buyer more and more.” Mass merchandising stores with self selection were as prominent in the United States and England as they were in Russia. The trip was Mr Barker's third to Russia. A.Moscow department store which employed 2400 shop assistants was run by a woman. “She was absolutely appalled that we do not have equal pay for women in New Zealand,” Mr Barker said.