BOOKING MIX-UP

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32561, 22 March 1971, Page 16

BOOKING MIX-UP

Double, and in some cases triple, hotel bookings on a trip to Queenstown caused “bitter resentment” in a party of international tourists on a pre-booked tour of New Zealand last week. Twenty-eight members of a party of 34 from the United States, England, Ireland and Australia signed a letter in which they said that many of them would perhaps never return to New Zealand. The tourists said that their tour, which began in Auckland, was very enjoyable until they reached the South Island.

“We understand your problem regarding the difficulty in building in the South Island,” the letter said, “but when we approached the highlight of our tour, which would be two days at Queenstown at a comfortable motel, we found the accommodation had been either double or triple booked. “Consequently, we were forced to stay at an inferior hotel to that which was scheduled in the itinerary, at Cromwell, 38 miles from Queenstown. This meant traversing this route four times,” they said. The tourists felt that if this practice continued, New Zealand’s tourist industry would lose greatly, because the visitors who experienced it would not book again, and by their adverse criticisms they would deter others from coming.