ATTRACTING TOURISTS

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 32, 9 February 1929, Page 8

ATTRACTING TOURISTS

AUSTRALIAN SCHEME

COMMITTEE RAISES £70,000

(From "The Post's" Representative.)

SYDNEY, 24th January.

The special committee which some time ago set out to raise £70,000 to flnanco a scheme for attracting tourist traffic to Australia, was ablo to- announco last week that it had achieved its object. It is proposed that the expenditure of thin largo sum will be extended over a period of five years. The railway departments of several of the States, the Development and Migration Commission, insurance societies, banks, public companies, and firms, as well as private individuals, have contributed to the fund, which will bo administered independent of government control. Estimating the average daily expenditure of each tourist in travel and hotel expenses at 40s a day for 21 days, 100,----000 tourists a year would expend £21,----000,000 in Australia in five years. The committee is confident that this result is obtainable.

The whole scheme is being organised by Mr. C. W. Wilson, of Melbourne, who has had the assistance of Mr. C. H. Holmes, chairman of the Victorian Eailways Betterment Board. In New South Wales Sir Hugh Denison, newspaper magnate, Sir Clifton Lovo, merchant, and Sir Arthur Kiekard, of the real estate business, as well as many other prominent citizens, are giving the movement ' every assistance. -AH the State authorities have been negotiating with the committee, and it is expected that the tourist will be able to travel through Australia under the most favourable conditions. The committee considers that it might be in a position to spend up to £20,000 a year for the next five years in advertising Australia abroad, and making it known as a place offering travellers great and varied interests. ..,

"In California, South Africa, and other countries," said Mr. Wilson the other day, "this kind of enterprise has produced most valuable results, and it is believed that oventually Australia can do better, because it has the attractions of the whole continent to display as a touring ground, and few countries have such a variety of interest as we can offer. In Australia we bring people from overseas at a great- expense to eurselves; California invites people to make the voyage at their own expense, and claims .that those who do'so are more enterprising in character than many immigrants who need some special inducement in the way of subsidies towards their fares and a promise of work when they'arrive in the country. Many thousands of Australians go touring abroad every year, and many of them do not return. The Australian travel tours that we propose to conduct should bo an effective offset to this loss of money and population. They should also give to home-staying Australians, ,who have not, tho opportunity to travel abroad, some relief from the sense of isolation, which comes from never seeing any people but their own kind." ,•■■-.

While travelling through America not long ago, Mr. Wilson made several inquiries into the methods adopted for attracting tourists/ In California, a country which is often described as resembling Australia in .many ways, he found that the care of tourists was a brisk and profitable industry. It began in 1920, when a few business men, realised tho need of, doing something to forestall a possible period of social and commercial stagnation as a reaction from the intense activities of war time. Ihe promoters had difficulty, however, in inducing others to subscribe to" the fund, and in the first year only £10,000 was raised. But this money, judicially spent in advertising, brought some thousands of tourists to California. The returns were carefully checked by the railway companies, with the result that funds were more freely supplied in the following year, and there was a still greater flow of tourists., The matter was then taken up in earnest, and in 1926 £100,000 was being spent on tourist publicity, and it was calculated that the effort of that year alone brought to Californit 1,500,000 visitors, who spent £34,000,000 in , travelling through the country. Ten per cent, of the visitors' aftera tour of^ the State, decided to remain there permanently. ' Perhaps New Zealand as well as Australia can learn something from the experience of California. Now Zealand's efforts at publicity in Australia are inoro or less spasmodic, and that being so are not likely to bring that measure of success that New Zealanders might hope for. Australia contains thousands of people who might easily be attracted to New Zealand if its virtues were placed before them, and the facilities of travel made plain to them. Last year display advertisements extolling the attractions of tho Dominion appeared in the Australian Press, but this year they are lacking. YVhy? The majority of Australian people are thoroughly ignorant of New Zealand, and seeing that they are within three days' steam of New Zealand this should not be so. The New Zealand Government must take full blame for this condition of affairs. A small two-inch advertisement in one' paper in Sydney can hardly be termed intense publicity. Here is a large field for exploitation. '