Tourism 'missed the boat’

Press, 10 May 1980, Page 6

Tourism ' missed the boat’

New Zealand tourism “has missed the boat” in spite of an impressive-looking increase in visitors in the last decade, according to Mr Bob Jones, the entrepreneur and author. Mr Jones was speaking to the Toastmasters’ national convention in Christchurch, where he was presented with the Toastmasters’ Gavel Award for his contribution to communication. The number of overseas visitors had risen from 140,000 to 430,000 in the last decade. In the same time, receipts from tourism had grown from. $22 million to $lBO million. “The statistics look quite impressive but when taken in perspective with the staggering world growth in tourism, it is clear we have missed the boat,” Mr Jones said. Laying the blame for the failure “fairly and squarely with the Government,” Mr Jones said the Government had shown an unimaginative lack of enterprise in promoting tourism. “If I was Minister of Tourism, I would take four years to lift the tourist figures, not to one million 1

annual visitors by 1990, as has been suggested as our '' goal, but to two million by > 1984,” he said. Other measures he would take would include giving - carte blanche to any airline interested in bringing visitors to New Zealand, and ? soliciting custom from other airlines. This alone would double the tourist intake, Mr Jones said. “I would provide 80 per r cent finance at 10 per cent ’ interest rate for hotel construction,” he said. This might create an overnight building boom, but it would consist of building hotel rooms • “which we desperately need,” and not thousands of homes that would lie empty. The present finance avail?; able for construction — 60 per cent mortgages at the prevailing interest rate -* was so meagre as to be a ' waste of time. “Money has to be plentiful, and it has to * be cheap,” he said. Although he could not see the attraction of casinos or extended shopping hours, he believed that they should be introduced, not just as tourist attractions but as a liberalisation of the New Zealand lifestyle. *