Coast “Fairy Stories ” Over

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31783, 13 September 1968, Page 26

Coast “Fairy Stories ” Over

(From Our Own Reporter) GREYMOUTH, Sept. 13. “The West Coast is no longer unique in the licensing field—those days are over,” says the Licensing Control Commission in the preamble to a report of its review, earlier this year, of the 100 hotels in the region between Karamea and the glaciers. “It does not require an evangelical commission to express discontent with conditions,- and to insist on improvement,” says the commission’s report, which is signed

by Mr S. T. Barnett (chairman) and Messrs C. L. Spencer and N. Butcher. Licensees had good cause for misgiving when the review began, and with good reasons, says the report, for if the commission were to apply the full, but minimum standards, there would be real cause for worry on the part of many whose livelihood depended on their in-, vestment in hotels. “But even the most tolerant treatment is not going to preserve the West Coast hotel industry as some have experienced it, and on the basis on which it is now conducted,” the report goes on. “Unique in its scenic views and breathtaking beauty, the West Coast in its licensing field is no longer unique—those days are over.

“Many West Coast hotels are uneconomic and even approaching bankruptcy; some are being borne along, unknowingly but inevitably, to the commercial morgue.” The chief problem, the report says, is that there are too many hotels in an area of restrained, sensible drinkers —the “hard-drinking" reputation amounts to nonsensical fairy stories—with a static population, and hotels which, in nearly all cases, have not adjusted to changing hours. “And perhaps the last straw may turn out to be 10 o’clock closing and the disinclination of officialdom to turn a benign eye on the indefinite neighbours and the Sunday sessions,” the report says.

The commission, which urges the West Coast to get

down to the business of making its remarkable attractions even more popular, suggests that the hotel industry is not meeting the present demands of visitors or travellers.

In its decision, the commission sets out detailed lists of requisitions to be carried out before it will confirm the provisional renewal of licences, only one hotel being given an outright renewal. It reserves its decision in some cases and cancels licences where abandonment has been approved. It indicates that the survival of some licences depends in many instances on compliance with the substantial adjustments it has set down, but which, it suggests, are hardly warranted.