Plan For Tourism ‘Desperate Need’

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31090, 20 June 1966, Page 6

Plan For Tourism ‘Desperate Need’

New Zealand desperately needed an overall plan for its tourist industry, and it needed it now, said Mr J. L. Chapman, president of the New Zealand Travel and Holidays Association at its annual conference in Christchurch on Saturday.

“It is high time we had a plan.” said Mr Chapman, “a long-term tourist development plan expertly conceived with specific goals. The tourist industry is a composite industry and demands a composite development plan. “I sincerely believe that with the high growth rate of tourism, New Zealand can no longer tolerate haphazard development. At present there are too many individual cells in our industry working away and developing without proper knowledge and consultation with their neighbours.”

Mr Chapman gave as examples of unco-ordinated development, the purchase of modem jets by Air New Zea-

land while tourists had to use outdated limousines when they got to New Zealand; the development of Auckland Airport while tourist hotels to cope with the increased traffic were still three years away; the opening of an ice rink at Queenstown and approval of more bedrooms for the Hermitage while Queenstown desperately needed more first-class accommodation and the Hermitage had hardly a single outdoor tourist amenity. “A plan must be devised,” he said, “properly to balance and regulate expenditure and development, on such things as tourist hotels, national parks, dispersal hotels, tourist roads, internal transport, airports and all those things that go to make a composite tourist industry. “We must reject the system of parochial pressures and political needling. Just because the “Waikikamookau” Progress League demands a tourist hotel this should no longer be a reason for action in itself. “Let us carefully evaluate our present tourist plant, fill the gaps, size up our markets, prepare a development plan, and commence building to that plan,” he said.