TOURIST TRAFFIC

Greymouth Evening Star, 29 August 1934, Page 8

TOURIST TRAFFIC

ROTORUA MAYOR’S CRITICISM [FEB PBESS ASSOCIATION.] ROTORUA, August 29. In an interview to-day regarding the recent tourist conference at Wellington to place the Tourist Department under the control of a board, the Mayor of Rotorua (Mr J. T. Jackson) said: “I am somewhat perturbed over the fact that a proposal of such farreaching nature and involving such vital questions of policy with respect to the whole tourist business, should have been dealt with in such a casual manner. So far as I am aware, any organisations with which I have been able to get in touch, who were present at the conference, had no prior knowledge that such vital questions of policy were coming, before the conference, and therefore the delegates representing such organisations were not in a position either to speak or vote on the question with the authority of the organisations they represented. Much had been said of commercial and business methods being applied to the Tourist Department, but the procedure adopted at the conference of asking delegates to vote on a vital matter on purely verbal representation, is tantamount to asking a man to invest in a company without showing him the complete prospectus, a scarcely businesslike start for any venture.

PACIFIC ISLANDS. AUCKLAND, August 29. “There is a great possibility in Pacific Island development as a world playground,” said Rear Admiral Burges Watson, in an address to the Travel Club, to-day. He said it appeared to him that a new trade—pleasure or holiday cruising—was likely to spread to the Pacific waters. Proper development would make such lovely islands as Raratonga and Samoa, pleasant winter resorts. Any move to provide hotel accommodation and other facilities must be done with foresight and careful study of the comfort of passengers, as nothing annoyed them more than vexatious restrictions on their liberty. It struck him that the recent cruise I of the Marama was very short. Perhaps arrangements could be made for more or longer cruises or for passengers to break the journey at some desired island to spend the winter months, and then return by another cruise ship.