BAY OF PLENTY BEACON Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. WEDNESDAY, AUG. 16, 1950 NO TRUST HOTEL

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 15, Issue 83, 16 August 1950, Page 4

BAY OF PLENTY BEACON Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. WEDNESDAY, AUG. 16, 1950 NO TRUST HOTEL

The decision made by the Whakatane Borough Council not to proceed with a poll on the question of a trust hotel in the town appears, unfortunate though it may be, to be the best decision in the circumstances. The three-star hotel stipulated by the Licensing Commission is an ambitious building and the likelihood that public finance would be available for it at a time when the hotel business is ceasing to be considered a giltedged investment —if it ever was as sound an investment as some people believed —is slight. Had a poll been held, with few voters, a small number of persons could easily have decided that Whakatane was to have a trust-controlled hotel and the Borough Council would have committed investors —if investoors could be found—to an investment of a by-no-means stable nature.

There are many commendable aspects of public control of hotels but the success which has attended, for instance, the Invercargill experiment, might not follow here, where the new hotel would be in direct opposition to others which are privately owned. In Invercargill, all hotels are under the control of a trust —and even that trust’s profits are not acquired easily. *

The fact that breweries are not interested in the proposed new Whakatane licence is itself an indication of falling returns from the hotel business. All-in-all, the Borough Council must be considered to have made a decision warranted in its cautiousness.