OVERSEAS TOURISTS

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 263, 2 August 1929, Page 18

OVERSEAS TOURISTS

Sir, —The protest of Sir Francis Bell against the worship of the wealthy overseas tourist, will be a satisfaction to many people who take a wide view of what is best for New Zealand, and consequently regard the possibility of a big influx of these people as anything but an unmixed blessing. As Sir Francis has shown, this pandering to the wealthy tourist will tend to debase a good proportion of those people who make it their chief business in life to cater for him. It will make accommodation and travelling very expensive and so make New Zealand more and more inaccessible to the average man and woman. It will tend to dislocate the labour market, for this traffic will be almost wholly a summer one, and many of those engaged in it will be thrown out of employment in the winter. While the tourist produces absolutely nothing and is only a bird of passage, he demands special attention and the best of everything, and expensive roads must be made wherever he desires to travel. The railways must eater specially for him ; hotels must provide luxuriously, for is he not willing to pay? It matters nothing that the settler who in at work on the land breaking in the

country for the generations to come, has the merest makeshift for roads, and often has to ford rivers and streams at the risk of his life, lie must put up with what he can get. Then what of the Maori? He., too, is demoralised by the patronising tourist. What would some of the grand old savages of 100 years ago think of their descendants peddling bogus tikis and meres,, while their children are begging pennies? Surely it is the character of the people of any country that really determines its real claim to greatness? The great aim of seme of our legislators to make New Zealand a sort of super Switzerland. says very little for their ideals. — I am, etc., PATRIOT.