CATERING FOR TOURISTS

Evening Star, Issue 22540, 7 January 1937, Page 8

CATERING FOR TOURISTS

The future of New Zealand as a “ playground of the Pacific ” seems assured. The multum in parvo nature of the Dominion’s attractions, which are being made more accessible year by year, gives overseas tourists an opportunity of feasting the eye on a wealth of scenic beauty with a minimum of travelling. As a matter of fact, however, facilities for travel are steadily improving, and it can no longer be said that the matter of getting from place to place imposes on the visitor a hardship which detracts anything from the pleasure to be obtained on these temperate shores. In the main, hotel accommodation has not yet reached the high standard of luxury to which habitues of the loading resorts of Europe and America may be accustomed, hut in this respect also there is evidence of a conscientious endeavour to study the requirements of the comfort-loving globo trotter. This much, at least, can he gleaned from the absence in recent years of the criticism formerly submitted in no par-

ticularly modified terms. Still another undoubted incentive to travel is the inauguration of the luxury liner, which, besides being the liftt word in comfort, usually sails to an itinerary which provides an opportunity for its. passengers to enjoy round trips. It is in this matter of round trips that the North Island in the meantime has a clear advantage over the South. Most of the excursion vessels from Australia, for instance, arrive at one of the two chief North Island ports and depart from the other, thus permitting tourists to journey by rail or car through the interior and visit the best of the beauty places en passant.

It is understood that one of the aims of the newly-formed South Islands Travel Association is to provide better opportunities for visitors to pass through the South Island. The director of the association (Mr J. J. W. Pollard) has commented on the lack of. time allowed for participants in the tourist cruises from Australia to come south, and his efforts to have the position rectified should command the support of all who are able to co-operate. There should be no suggestion of rivalry between the islands. We in the south, despite our confidence in the merits of our scenery, must realise that on strangers the weird fascination of the thermal regions exerts an influence that compels interest, and it would be unreasonable and ungracious on our part to lure tourist traffic south at the expense of our neighbours. The happiest solution of the apparent neglect of the south lies not in a policy of attracting cruising ships exclusively to southern ports, but rather in agitating for a system under which passengers are allowed time to see the whole of the Dominion. As a rule tourists of this description are pressed for neither time nor money, and would welcome a chance to cover both tho North and the South Islands on tho same trip. At any rate, it does appear that some, if not all, of the ships could disembark passengers at Picton or Lyttelton and pick them up again at Dunedin or Bluff. This course should be kept strongly in mind in view of the opening of the Haast Pass road, which, when available to carry motor traffic, should furnish the means of unfolding before the eyes of overseas people the unbroken sequence of,beauty spots as exemplified by the Buller Gorge, the Southern Alps, and the Lakes District.