TOURIST TRAFFIC

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20743, 14 June 1929, Page 8

TOURIST TRAFFIC

According to a message from Ottawa the tourist traffic brought about £50,000,000 into Canada last year. This represented at least a doubling of the value of the traffic within twelve months. ' The figures are impressive enough to make New Zealand, and Australia also, feel envious and neglected. Canada mainly owes her satisfactory position as a tourist resort to the fact that she offers varied attractions in her fine lake and mountain scenery to hordes of citizens of the United States who have only to cross the unmarked boundary line to enjoy a certain freedom denied to them under the laws of their own country, while of course the immense vogue of the motor tends greatly to the encouragement of holiday migration of this kind. New Zealand is wonderfully rich in scenic attractions, but the tourist has to make a long journey to reach our shores. Still, the value of tourist traffic to any country is widely recognised, and if this Dominion desires to attract a greater number of visitor's—it is estimated that her present average is less than ten. thousand per annum, who spend perhaps a million of money in the country—she can do it only through a display of enterprise and initiative. Her scenic assets are so great that "concerning the results of a vigorous exploitation of them there should be no room whatever for doubt. Private enterprise, it is satisfactory to observe, is coming into greater prominence in this matter. The attractions of Mount Cook are becoming increasingly recognised through the energetic direction of the Hermitage by a private company, and the same interests are showing their faith in tourist traffic by the erection at Tongarii'o Park of a chateau which should offer tourist accommodation of a kind of which New Zealand has as yet too little. Necessarily the Government must play the leading part in providing facilities for tourists and in attracting them to these shores. At Rotorua last week Sir Joseph Ward spoke of restoring the glories and prestige of that resort and of making it the tourist centre of the Dominioij. We cannot suppose that he meant such a statement to be strictly interpreted. To the idea of making Rotorua a focal point of tourist traffic in the North Island no exception can be taken. But the same idea cannot apply in relation to the South Island. Rotorua and the South Island are far apart and have nothing particularly in common. In character there is all the difference between the attractions of the northern resort and those of the Southern Alps and the lake and fiord region. The scenery of the South Island may well have a greater interest to many visitors to the Dominion than that of Rotorua, and under a sound tourist policy it must he exploited upon its merits.