Travel men attack politicians at forum

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34127, 13 April 1976, Page 22

Travel men attack politicians at forum

(From

LES BLOXHAM)

AUCKLAND, April 12. Persons who persisted in comparing New Zealand s income from tourism with the amount New Zealanders spent on overseas travel were criticised by three of the seven guest speakers at a forum organised by the National 1 ravel Association in the South Pacific Hotel today.

Although no names were mentioned during the addresses the attacks were aimed at politicians in general and the Prime Minister in particular. Mr Muldoon has on several occasions recently expressed concern that overseas exchange remittances are higher than the country’s earnings from tourism. The first salvo was fired by Mr D. A. Patterson, general manager of N.A.C. “We hear too often the value of tourism discounted as an earner of overseas income by those, often in influential places, who quote the level of overseas expenditure on travel and completely ignore the fact that a very substantial proportion of this is incurred by businessmen, farmers, and others who are promoting their own sales,” he said. “The cost of this travel should be debited against the export of primary products and the manufacture of exports to arrive at their true worth.” Mr Patterson said tourism receipts were built up by

dollars far-flung geographically over many segments of the community. The one-day cruise-ship visitor in Auckland who spends $2O in Queen Street may benefit a factory in Blenheim which manufactures greenstone souvenirs, he said.

Mr J. H. Hartstonge, general manager of the Tourist and Publicity Department, said he believed it was no more logical to charge foreign travel costs against tourism exchange earnings than it was to debit the cost of imported manufactures against the overseas sales of New Zealand's manufactured goods. "Similarly, the exchange costs of imported foodstuffs are not charged against the earnings of our produce — nor should they be,” said Mr Hartstonge. New Zealand was, he said, in a similar position to many other developed countries with a high standard of hv-

ing and whose people were free to travel abroad. “We have a further consideration in that being at the end of the line, so to speak, we have a lengtny journey to destinations. “So we tend to spend longer, and thus costlier, holidays abroad — especially in Britain — than do our visitors. If New Zealand attracted only a handful of visitors there would be no less motivation for our people to travel abroad,” said Mr Hartstonge.

Later, Mr R. H. C. Walshe, chairman of United Travel Holdings, said that while outbound travel could be described as an import industiv, and in-bound as an export, there was less justification in relating the financial aspect of the two than ’here was in relating overseas earnings of forestry against lite exchange expenditure neeoed to import plant and equipment to turn the trees into pulp. “1 have also heard the occasional voice from die farming sector say that ‘their’ overseas exchange earnings are being frittered away by -other sectors of the community on non-essentials and luxuries,” said Mr Walshe.

“No doubt the travelling New Zealander fails into this category — unless of course he hapens to be a fanner." '