SUMMER AT ROTORUA.

Otago Witness, Issue 3802, 25 January 1927, Page 61

SUMMER AT ROTORUA.

RECORD RAINFALL. AUCKLAND, January 21. Many Rotorua business people are disappointed with the outcome of the holiday season, which was marred at Christmas by unprecedented wet weather. The chief sufferers were the tourist motor services, and in a smaller degree the hotels and boarding-houses, but the effect was almost general, and was felt by most of the tradesmen dependent on the tourist and holiday visitor for custom. The fallingoff in business was most noticeable during the fortnight or three weeks following Christmas. The accommodation houses, which had .hitherto been full to capacity, then began to lose many boarders, who had become disheartened at the continuance of the wet weather. Families who had intended stopping over a week gave notice, and packed up their belongings, preferring to shorten their stay rather than pin. thenfaith on a problematic improvement in the weather conditions. I ne families, indeed, who set out for tne thermal regions by car, never’ arrived there, being deterred by the state of the clav roads. The number of families who never saw Rotorua for this reason is set down variously at 50 to 100. The motor services engaged in tourist sightseeing “did a complete frost” on Christmas Day, and were not much better off on Boxing Day, strong gales, accompanied by heavy downpours, making motoring conditions anything but pleasurable. The streets of Rotorua were flooded on December 25 and 26, and many places of business were inundated. Visitors were thus obliged to remain indoors and put up with makeshift amusements. It is little wonder that the appetite for “doing the sights” was effectively damped. “Business was a washout at Christmas,” declared a leading garage proprietor in Rotorua. “All our service cars were maintained, of course, but the sightseeing cars just stood outside the door and waited. No one would be tempted to travel for pleasure in such depressing weather. The result is that our Christmas turnover was the worst for years, a serious matter when you remember that these services are maintained mainly by revenue derived from holiday traffic. It was most unfortunate for everyone concerned. Some of the service people find solace in the prospects for a good Easter trade, while the coming visit of the Duke and Duchess of York should compensate for Christmas disappointments.” A party of 40 American tourists is expected to arrive in the immediate future, on a conducted tour through the thermal region. They will be followed by the Royal visitors and afterwards by 400 American passengers by the Cunard liner Franconia. “The American tourists always mean money for Rotorua,” an hotel manager stated. “They have the cash to spend and scatter it freely, provided they are pleased with what they see. Most of them only stay a day, or two days at most, in Rotorua, but in that, space of time they spend more than the average Englishmen or New Zealander would spend in a month.” If the long view is taken and the setback at Christmas is not over emphasised, it is evident that Rotorua will not suffer the black year that was predicted for it by the pessimists who sprang up like mushrooms over the New Year. The interval to Easter, in fact, should mark the end of a reasonably profitable summer season.