Urgent support for Convention Bureau

Press, 22 June 1978, Page 4

Urgent support for Convention Bureau

The Christchurch City Council will give a sum of money to the Christchurch Convention Bureau. The amount was not specified when the announcement was made to the Town Hall Board of Management yesterday. The bureau required urgent and effective support, its chairman (Mr R. W. Skjellerup) told the board yesterday. It now appeared that no support was forthcoming from the metropolitan local bodies. With the demise of the Canterbury Public Relations Office, it was urgent that the promotion of Christchurch as a convention and visitor centre was continued, before Christchurch lost out to other centres, Mr Skjelierup said. Cr M. McG. Clark said that the board had produced a child in the convention

bureau that had set about “demolishing and tearing down the city’s existing structures. It had paid out sorely for very little,” she said. “We were to confine our promotion to the Town Hall we have exceeded that initial brief, and bitten off a lot more than we can afford to chew,” Mrs Clark said. The chairman of the board (Mr H. G. Hay) said that the bureau was set up as an incorporated body to promote Christchurch as a convention centre because "this was not being done by the Canterbury Progress League — let us face it."

The board decided to refer the matter of bureau support to its executive. The bureau wanted to use the Town Hall’s secretarial services, and hoped that its manager (Mr B. P. Connell) would act as director.