"TOURISTS WANTED”

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 554, 5 January 1929, Page 9

"TOURISTS WANTED”

GREAT BRITAIN’S NEED What tourist visitors mean, in value, to France has been emphasised by Mr. Douglas Hacking, British Minister for Overseas Trade, who referred especially to British tourists, and drew, from the vast sums spent in France, a vital lesson to be applied at home. Speaking at the banfluet of the French Chamber of Commerce in London, held at the Hyde Park Hotel, recently, Mr. Hacking said that in 1927, 833,000 persons entered France from Great Britain. 223,000 from North America, 534,000 from Spain, and 58,000 from Holland. If we added to them the many tens of thousands of persons who went to France from the other European countries, from South America and from Egypt and the East, we should get a total figure for 1927 of about 1,800.000. “If we think what that vast number oC people must have spent we can believe that an estimate of fifty million pounds sterling is not out of the question. I believe some people put it as high as £100,000,000. “Surely we can learn something from this great industry of France’s. 1 admit there are some ways in which we cannot compete. “London is a city, in many respects, of unequalled charm to the visitor, but it would be foolish to suggest that it could compete on equal terms with that gaiety and liveliness for which the name Paris has become almost a household word. “But iu this country we have much Britain as a pleasure resort is not to show the foreign tourist. Great nearly well enough known abroad.”