Tourism Planning COUNCIL OUTSIDE INDUSTRY URGED

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31090, 20 June 1966, Page 14

Tourism Planning COUNCIL OUTSIDE INDUSTRY URGED

The New Zealand tourist industry needed an outside planning body which could see the role of the industry in the even bigger picture of the whole New Zealand economy, Mr G. N. Roberts, chairman of Air New Zealand, told the Travel and Holidays Association’s annual conference in Christchurch yesterday.

“The membership of this planning body,” he said, “should be small in number, big in knowledge of the industry, but not made up of representation directly from the industry and its various elements.”

Mr Roberts said he visualised a body of only three men, and suggested it be called the Tourist Development Council. It should not be involved in selling or promotion, and it need not have great powers. But it would have a co-ordinating role and be the final adviser, perhaps through the association, to the Government. Later the conference passed a resolution instructing its incoming executive to give urgent consideration to Mr Roberts’s proposals and to other aspects of tourism targets raised during the conference, and to decide the best method by which rapid economic development of the industry could be realised. The resolution called on the executive to submit to the Minister of Tourism (Mr Eyre) an integrated plan for maximum expansion of the industry as soon as possible.

Mr Roberts said he believed there was a missing cog in the tourist industry machinery, and he did not think that the existing nature and purpose of either the Tourist Department or the association was such that they could provide it or be appropriately adaoted to do so. “This missing cog, I see as an objective, independent source of guidance, analysis and recommendation to the Government and to the industry at the very highest level,” he said. He said that the planning body he proposed would, by its very objectivity, independence and wide-ranging knowledge of the bigger national economic picture be better able to guide the industry’s long-term destiny and thus ensure the tourist industry’s potential was developed for the country’s good. “At present,” said Mr

Roberts, “the Minister personally, and sometimes Cabinet sub-committeas, becomes involved in detail which would be better-pro-cessed by such a body, leaving the Minister and the Cabinet free to make decisions when all the facts in a balanced and objective form! are established.” He said that by choosing for its members men who did not depend for their livelihood directly upon the industry, such a body could help the Minister put the tourist industry into its rightful place in New Zealand’s economic picture, and do so without anyone being able to lay a charge of self-interest on the part of those advancing the cause of tourism. Mr Roberts said the tourist industry could learn a useful lesson from the farming industry about the value of outside guidance. He also thought that a member of the proposed indicative planning unit within the Treasury would be an appropriate member of the tourist planning body he proposed.