Call For Watch On Tourist Charges

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31089, 18 June 1966, Page 14

Call For Watch On Tourist Charges

The New Zealand tourist industry must be constantly alert to the danger of charging visitors too much, the Minister of Tourism (Mr Eyre) told delegates at the opening of the New Zealand Travel and Holidays Association’s convention in Christchurch yesterday.

New Zealand had a high standard of living, labour costs were high, and it was clear that a close watch must be kept to ensure food and accommodation charges did not climb out of proportion to the standards and quality offered, he said. While New Zealand’s visitor industry continued to expand, New Zealanders themselves were becoming more travel conscious: indeed, the country’s isolation encouraged New Zealanders to travel overseas. Consequently there

was an increasing outflow of New Zealand currency to other countries, and there had been a tendency to measure this outflow against New Zealand’s own earnings of foreign exchange from visitors, and to say because the outflow exceeded the inflow, the tourist industry was running at a loss. This was emphatically not so, Mr Eyre said. The tourist industry in New Zealand was not run as a complete going concern, but neither was the dairy industry used as a basis for importing butter, nor the meat industry run so that New Zealand could buy steak from the United States. “New Zealand’s visitor industry exists to earn foreign exchange to help to pay for all the goods we want to buy overseas. It is not run for the sake of New Zealanders who wish to travel overseas.”