TOURIST CROP

Hokitika Guardian, 21 November 1929, Page 3

TOURIST CROP

LINKING UP "PACIFIC BUREAU

WELLINGTON, November 18. “The ‘tourist crop’ last year was worth ten million dollars to Hawaii and is our third largest industry,” said Mr G. T. Armitage, secretary of the Hawaiian Tourist Bureau of Honolulu, who arrived in Wellington by the Makura in furtherance of the scheme for linking up the various tourist bureaux of the Pacific. Mr Armitage said that his object was to arrange a large advertising compaigii in New Zealand next year and to perfect the proposed organisation of Pacific tourist bureaux. The idea had

been developed ;it the beginning of the year by correspondence with all the bureaux round the Pacific, and the scheme had been endorsed by Japan, Phillippines Travel Association, Java, Australia, and New Zealand. He hoped to arrange for an organisation meeting in Honolulu next year of all the bureaux concerned. The purpose of the Association was simply to exchange literature and ideas and to try to pass on travellers from one place to another and by concerted effort to divert some of the enormous trend of tourists from the east to the west of the Pacific. ‘We know that the Pacific area is on the verge of a great travel boom, and if the tourist bureaux get together we are all going to benefit a great deal more than we have in the past,” said Mr Armitage. “New Zealand is a charming country with innumerable nuractions and is entitled to many more travellers than she now sees. The more the travelling public of America become acquainted with your attraction the greater will be your prosperity from the new money they will spend here. The tourist traffic is our third largest industry, and through heavy advertising we have so developed the tourist' crop’ that last year it reached a point where it was worth ten million dollars. Of course agriculture—sugar and pineapples—is our first industry and is worth 100 million dollars a. year to us.” After spending ten days in New Zealand, which Mr and Mrs Armitage visited six years ago. they will proceed to'Australia and thence back to Honolulu, reaching home early in the New Year,