TASMAN CROSSING

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 135, 4 December 1935, Page 13

TASMAN CROSSING

CRITICISM OF FARES

TOURISTS INFLUENCED

Thousands more Australian tourists could be induced to visit New Zealand each year if the fares for passages .across the Tasmaii were reduced, said Mr. R. H. Brown, travel' manager for the Bank of New South Wales, in an address at a tourist conference at the Hermitage this week. Mr. Brown said that the present rates were extremely high and many intending.tourists found them so prohibitive that they simply could not make the trip. If they did pay the fare asked by the companies then they would not have enough money to spend on the rest of the trip. The result of this was that tourists went elsewhere. They would continue to go elsewhere unless the rates were altered.

■ The biggest majority of tourists comprised the people with small incomes, said Mr. Brown. If their tastes were catered for and their requirements met, then the tourist trade would very greatly, beneat. He suggested that in the slack season fares across the Tasman should be cut, perhaps by as much as 50 per cent. If that were done, he said, it was certain that other tourist charges, such . as accommodation and land transport, would also be reduced by a similar percentage. The result, he claimed, could not fail to benefit both the shipping companies and the Dominion, and it would turn the slack season into a busy one, in which a new and big class of tourists would visit the Dominion.

Other speakers supported the .suggestion (reports the Christchurch

"Press"), and it was stated that the Tourist Advisory Board had discussed several times the advisability of asking shipping companies to reduce the fares. -A- comparison was made between the fares charged between Sydney and Melbourne, and those across the Tasman, and it was suggested' that further requests should be made to shipping companies.