EGMONT AND TOURISTS.

Taranaki Daily News, 13 July 1935, Page 6

EGMONT AND TOURISTS.

The suggestion brought forward by Mr. E. C. Hayton at the last meeting of the Taranaki Chamber of Commerce that a framed enlargement of Mt. Egmont be presented to a certain organisation in Sydney with the object of attracting Australian tourists to Taranaki has much to commend it. Yet it is possible to spend a great deal of money on such forms of publicity without achieving a very substantial result. Rotorua, and to a certain extent Napier, are leaving Taranaki far behind in the tourist business, simply because they realise its enormous value and are enterprising and energetic enough to foster it on an organised and comprehensive scale. Producing pamphlets, pictures and propaganda at home and sending them abroad is satisfactory up to a point, but as in any commercial undertaking one must get out and get after the business to be successful. It is a great pity that there are not organisations in the chief Taranaki towns financially and otherwise strong enough to meet the Tourist Department on its own ground, force recognition of Taranaki’s claims, arrange for personal representation of the charms of the province on tourist steamers and at important points of contact such as Auckland, Wellington and Sydney, and press for inclusion of the province in arranged itineraries. The other, and undoubtedly the most important point of all, is to provide in Taranaki something that tourists will come a long way to see, and the fact must be faced that this is not provided at present. Except perhaps for the better skiing facilities in the depth of winter the mountains in the Tongariro National Park group cannot offer half what Egmont has to offer. But the Chateau Tongariro makes all the difference. Egmont fails as a tourist “draw” because it has not a hotel, or chateau, or whatever one likes to call the accommodation house, and accompanying facilities that overseas visitors desire. The most pressing requirement is that the Government should take over one of the existing hostels and extend it, or erect a new one, equip it with the indoor and outdoor facilities that tourists want, and thus become personally interested in bringing tourists to the province. Until this is done there seems little hope of much headway being made, and when it is done the opportunity for creating a valuable Taranaki tourist business will be a golden one. It is time the local bodies and progress organisations exerted their combined influence to this end.