Entertainer In Trade Promotion Drive

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32297, 15 May 1970, Page 14

Entertainer In Trade Promotion Drive

Howard Morrison, the entertainer, has become the kingpin in an export sales promotion drive in South-East Asia which could eventually earn New Zealand millions of dollars. Mr Morrison with a group of Maori entertainers will begin the drive from the Rama Hilton Hotel in Bangkok later this year. While guests dine on Bluff oysters, toheroa soup, whitebait and prime Canterbury lamb the Morrison group will entertain them with traditional Maori music and dancing.

At the same time he has made arrangements to advance the sale of New Zealand dairy goods in SouthEast Asia. During his recent visit to Bangkok, Mr Morrison saw a food festival sponsored by a Swiss who sent out a yodeller. Mr Morrison immediately suggested to the New Zealand Trade Commission and the Minister of Overseas Trade (Mr Marshall) to conduct a similar festival. “Our market in Bangkok is almost negligible. There is one shop selling New Zealand produced food in a city of 3} million people,” said Mr Mbrrison.

“You hardly see our mutton there. They get their mutton from the United States. I had some of it and it was really tough,” he said. Mr Morrison said that most of the dairy products sold in the Bangkok Hilton hotel came from Denmark.

The manager of the hotel had told him that if New Zealand could supply the same goods similarly wrapped it would get the contract. The manager did not know

■ that New Zealand produced . any wines. Mr Morrison has just ended ' a contract in Bangkok and is 1 visiting Christchurch with the 1 “Miss New Zealand” show. He said that the people of Bangkok held New Zealand in > high regard but knew little of - its history. In his show he i gave them his own interpretar tion of the importance of the ! Maoris. , Mr Morrison said that New - Zealand was the last country 1 on earth where people would i turn out for concerts in large : numbers. Cabarets were all that was left of entertainment abroad.