More tourism share due to NZ

Ruapehu Bulletin, Volume 6, Issue 282, 11 April 1989, Page 4 (Supplement)

More tourism share due to NZ

If you believe in what you have got, and show the world what you have got, then anything can happen."

This was a statement by world famous botanist, Dr David Bellamy, when he recently opened the extension to the Waitomo Caves Museum.

Information officer Maxgi Snow considers them well worth repeating and applicable to what the Taumarunui Districts Promotion and Develop-

ment Association is endeavouring to do. Dr Bellamy went on to say that tourism was the world's fastest growing industry and that New

Zealand has not yet got anything like the share of it it deserves. The $360,000 extension to the Caves Museum was jointly funded by the

Departments of Conservation and Tourism. It increased the size of the museum by two-thirds and includes a $100,00C audio visual display.

Dr Bellamy and the Under-secretary for Tourism, Mrs Annette King, also opened a Waitomo walkway for which the Department of Conservation found $67,000. DOC also gave $110,000 and $40,000 worth of labour to the museum project, while the Department of Tourism found $210,000. The guest speaker was delighted. Mr Bellamy said linking tourism and conservation was the way ahead for many countries in the world. "It is an absolute shambles that you get only 0.02 per cent of the international tourist trade. If you quadrupled the number of tourists you wouldn't even notice them." Tourism, he said, was the fastest growing industry and eamed more than half as much as farming for New Zealand last year. If more people could be attracted to New Zealand the balance of payments deficit would look rosier and there would be more funds to help the under-funded DOC. Current GoVernment cutbacks of funds to DOC meant conservation work was being undone, he said.