Club Med for S.I.?

Press, 20 February 1982, Page 6

Club Med for S.I.?

From Les Bloxham in Bangkok The Club Mediterranee will send a senior development specialist from Paris to New Zealand next month to assess the feasibility of establishing one of its hotels at Queenstown. Mr Jean-Robert Reznick,director of development from the Club Med's Paris headquarters, told the annual conference of the Pacific Area Travel Association in Bangkok that his organisation also hoped to expand in other areas of the Pacific including Fiji.

Queenstown would allow Club Med the opportunity of promoting its only winter ski-ing resort in the Southern Hemisphere, he said. The club's sports activities had changed over the last 30 years, more emphasis being placed today on trekking and ski-ing. It was no longer concentrating solely on the secluded beaches of tropical islands, said'Mr Reznick. The Club Med organisation, which has gained a reputation for fostering an “avante garde” atmosphere at its resorts, first became interested in establishing a

site in .New Zealand last year. It is believed that the club hopes to buy an established hotel on the lake-front. The general manager of the Tourist and Publicity Department, Mr Neil Plimmer, who is also attending the conference, took the opportunity of meeting Mr Reznick in Bangkok. “We are very excited about the prospect of having this world-wide resort chain in New Zealand,” Mr Plimmer said later. “It all looks verv encouraging."