VISITORS COMMENT ON OHOPE BEACH AND WHAKATANE

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 13, Issue 40, 12 January 1949, Page 5

VISITORS COMMENT ON OHOPE BEACH AND WHAKATANE

Holiday Eating Houses Required In the past few weeks there has been a large influx of visitors to Whakatane and Ohope, most of them bent on having a good holiday. All the hotels and camping grounds have been heavily booked, with the result that the population of the district has risen considerably, temporarily. * To find out the impressions gained by the visitors to this part of the country, a Beacon reporter inters viewed a number of the newcomers. Their comments were many and varied, some uncomfortably direct. However, most of those who stayed here appeared to have enjoyed themselves. ! He Was Hungry One visitor from Hamilton said that of all the towns he had passed through in New Zealand. Whakatane was the worst for getting a meal during the holiday period. Apart from the two hotels, if there were decent eating houses in the town, they never seemed to be open. Whlen meals at the hotels were off it was almost impossible to get anything to eat. “If there were only one restaurant at the service of the public at all times and' charging reasonable prices the town would have a great asset,?’ he added. Criticism was levelled at the number of shops that did not open after the holidays. “On January 5, when most of the shops opened in other towns in the country, a very small number did so in Whakatane,” said a woman visitor. “It may be convenient for these business houses to have their holidays all at once, but after all they have a duty to the public which, I don’t think they carried out ever that difficult period.”