IMPRESSIONS OF TOURIST

Taranaki Daily News, 19 December 1933, Page 4

IMPRESSIONS OF TOURIST

NEW ZEALAND ATTRACTIONS CRITICISM OF THE SERVICE. NOT ENOUGH FREEDOM ALLOWED. ADVICE OF LONDON VISITOR. That the general methods of the Government Tourist Department could be greatly improved was the opinion of Mr. H. Voorzanger, London, who has been spending a few days at New Plymouth. “I have travelled all over the world,” said Mr. Voorzanger to a News reporter yesterday, “and I never like to criticise, but your tourist service certainly needs improving.” He went on to state that there was no elasticity about the programmes. He had been sent to one resort for 16 days, to another for two and to another for five days. “I was quite ready to leave the first after three days,” he said, “but had to stay out my time. Now here at New Plymouth I would willingly have stayed longer but I have to go off tonight. Again, they give you little or no peace at the leading resorts. They are always wanting you to take trips, and when you do not appear keen they enlarge upon the wonders of the prospects. There are many like myself who desire to be left alone and wend our way. through your country just as it pleases us.” Mr. Voorzanger has formed a good opinion of New Zealand and its people who, he says, are the most hospitable and patriotic he has met on all his travels. “Why only this afternoon,” he said with a smile, “I was on one of your bowling greens and after five minutes I was ‘one of the boys’; they quickly made me feel at home.” He considers New Zealand’s main trouble was that it had gone ahead too rapidly. Public buildings and general development had all been carried out with borrowed money when a young country like New Zealand should have been feeling its way. “Take your own hospital as an example,” he went on. “It is a truly wonderful institution, and I doubt whether in any town of its size in any other country in the world there is anything to equal it It is certainly a laudable enterprise, but can you really afford it? That is the real question.’*

Mr. Voorzanger pointed out that New Zealand was really dependant upon one market for only three lines of goods, wool, dairy produce and meat. If any one or more of the demands for these fell off the Dominion was hard hit as at present. Nevertheless wool was now rising and British housewives were becoming more and more partial to New Zealand butter.

“The prospects,” he concluded, “though not actually bright as yet are Improving and I think will continue to do so. lam enjoying my stay in this Dominion and will take away happy memories of it and its people.”