New Luxury Hotel For Noumea

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31087, 16 June 1966, Page 10

New Luxury Hotel For Noumea

The most luxurious hotel to be built in New Caledonia will open next month. Ihe room Chateau Royal, backed by American, French, Australian, and Swiss interests, will cost 2 million dollars.

Many of the rooms were within 6ft of the waters of the Anse Vata Lagoon, said the hotel manager, Mr V. P. Dapper, in Christchurch, yesterday. He is vice-president of the Tourist Society of the South Pacific. The 80 rooms are in five different buildings on a fiveacre site. The hotel was designed by American and French architects, and the interior designs are by a French interior decorator, Jean Royere. The exterior will be French colonial and the interior, Louis XV. Mr Dapper said the hotel had taken three years to plan and had involved a two-year purchasing investigation programme in the United States, Italy, France, Belgium, Australia and Switzerland. It was hoped that the hotel would put New Caledonia on the tourist maps, he said. Cuisine would be French, and management would be provided by the Swiss. “We have a full professional hotel staff of 60. Many came from former French luxury hotels in North Africa,” he said. New Zealand would play its part in the life of the hotel, said Mr Dapper. “We have appointed an agent in Auckland who will be responsible for purchasing foodstuffs here.

‘These will be mainly primary produce. I might add that your New Zealand icecream is very popular in Noumea. Whenever a supply comes in all the shops put out big signs advertising the fact, and it goes very quickly.” Mr Dapper said the Chateau Royal Hotel and its facilities were aimed primarily at the American tourist who had “done” Europe, perhaps several times, and whose attention was being drawn by travel agents to the South Pacific.

‘This huge tourist potential from the United States will

be of inestimable benefit not only to New Caledonia but to New Zealand, Australia and possibly Fiji as well.” “The American tourist who can afford to come this far is not content just to see New Zealand and then go home. He wants a tour of other countries in the area. Already a circuit programme at reduced fares operates. I am urging New Zealand, Australia and New Caledonia , to form a South West Pacific commission within the Pacific Area Travel Association.' Mr Dapper said that the hotel was aiming for an 80 per cent occupancy rate, and to do this it is had to offer “respectable” prices. “Our accommodation charges are not beyond the pocket of the New Zealand tourist Your Government allows you to take £6 a day in spending money. With a wife that is £l2. It is possible for the couple to stay and eat at the Royal for £9 195,” he said. Mr Dapper said that at present 40 per cent of the tourists visiting Noumea were from Australia, 40 per cent were from New Zealand, 10 per cent were Americans, and about 8 per cent were from France. Noumea, which had the greatest store of nickel ore deposits in the world, enjoyed a high standard of living. There was no income tax and at present there were between 75 and 100 persons who were American-style millionaires.