TOURIST TRAFFIC

Evening Star, Issue 25593, 20 September 1945, Page 4

TOURIST TRAFFIC

FLEA FOR DEVELOPMENT A strong plea for New Zealanders to make a national move to give much greater publicity to the tourist attractions offering in the Dominion, especially an the United States, was made by Mr W. J. Bardsley, F.R.A. (N.Z.), in an address to the New Plymouth Rotary Club. Mr Bardsley, who for many years was secretary to the Otago Harbour Board, has given considerable study to this question. Mr Bardsley 6tated that, though for many years 'the Tourist Department and other organisations had attractions known abroad, there was still an almost incredible and amazing ignorance about New Zealand in countries from which tourist traffic should be drawn. It was necessary to organise extensively to dissipate this ignorance as soon as possible. " Our publicity in the past has been s~adly inadequate," he said. The best field for tourist publicity was the United States, he considered. New Zealand had already a good .start in that country through the 'many thousands of servicemen who had been stationed) in New Zealand at different times during the war against Japan. He considered that with the co-opera-tion of these men a big campaign could be successfully launched. Air services and- faster steamers would bring the United States much closer to New Zealand, and with the cessation of hostilities a move should be made with the least possible delay. When he was in the United States he had the opportunity of speaking on New Zealand's attractions to 20,000,000 listeners over a radio hook-up, and he was amazed at. the inquiries that had come to him as a result. Telephone calls were arriving almost before he had left the microphone. Mr Bardsley pointed out that Taranaki, with Mount Egmont, possessed a great potential tourist asset. " The ice axe, the crampon, and the ski rank among the greatest tourist attractions in the United States," he said. " Mount Egmont offers unexcelled attractions in this regard. How little is known of New Zealand's attractions at present vou can judge from the fact that in all New York, with its 7,000,000 inhabitants, I was able to discover only one folder on New Zealand.",

Mr Bardsley concluded with the suggestion that provincial and other organisations should be'. welded into a strong and virile national organisation for, as he put it, "the selling of our tourist goods. New. Zealand - has a potential gold mine in its tourist business, and we must see that this mine is properly developed."