HOTEL ACCOMMODATION

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23060, 10 June 1938, Page 10

HOTEL ACCOMMODATION

The problem of hotel accommodation, raised at the quarterly meeting of the Wellington Licensing Committee this week, should strike a responsive chord in Auckland. "Something could well be done," said Mr. J. H. Luxford, S.M., "to make the hotels of Wellington worthy of the city and to put them in a condition to fulfil their function." This complaint applies with even greater force to Auckland, the largest city in the Dominion and the focal point for the overseas tourist traffic, which is unable to compete even with Wellington in the matter of up-to-date hotel accommodation. Wellington has two modern hotels, designed with a private bathroom to every bedroom ; Auckland does not possess one. When this unsatisfactory position is ventilated, the argument is generally put forward that it is impossible to undertake the huge capital expenditure involved in the erection of new hotels when the demand for firstclass accommodation is only seasonal. Such an argument'' overlooks the fact that the tourist season in New Zealand lasts for fully six months of the year and that at any time when there is a wool sale, a race meeting, an important football match or the visit of an overseas liner hotel managers are forced to turn away hundreds of potential guests. In Rotorua, the centre of the tourist trade, the position is just as bad. As Mr. Luxford pointed out in Wellington, licensing committees are not armed with sufficient powers to insist on proper standards of accommodation; the law says that they shall be concerned only with the "pathetic, irreducible minimum." The approach of the centennial celebrations, with the expected influx of thousands of visitors to the t)ominion, should stir hotel proprietors to some semblance of j activity. Otherwise it would appear that an overhaul of the relevant provisions in the licensing legislation is long overdue.