The Daily News. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1912. A MATTER OF MOMENT.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 180, 17 December 1912, Page 4

The Daily News. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1912. A MATTER OF MOMENT.

With a more general appreciation of the claims of New Plymouth as an ideal holiday centre, the time will not he far distant when the question of securing further hoarding accommodation in the town will have to be faced. We believe, indeed, that the time has already arrived when steps in this direction should be taken. An effective scheme of advertising the attractions and advantages of the town and district is being energetically conducted by the Expansion and Tourist League, and already, as a result of their praiseworthy efforts, many people from all over the Dominion are turning their attention to New Plymouth as a centre at which to spend their holidays and recuperate. Practically speaking, the publicity campaign has only been commenced, and if the same success continues to attend the League's subsequent operations, it is not beyond the range of possibility that the town will be unable to cater for tke traffic. This would be little short of disastrous, and steps should he taken to prevent such a contingency. The demand, some will say, will create th» supply, but the point is that the demand may come before facilities for meeting it have been provided, and the bad advertisement the town will get as a con-

sequence may minimise, or nullify altogether, all the good work that hag been and is being done by the League. How is axtra accommodation to be obtained? That is the question. Comparatively speaking, the hotel accommodation in the town is not large; it is frequently taxed in normal times, and we believe it would pay the proprietors handsomely to make extensions immediately. The hotel people may argue that there is under the present law* too much uncertainty connected with their licenses to warrant them in undertaking the fresh liabilities that further extensions would entail. But oven if they lost their licenses, owing to an adverse licensing yqte, they would have to utilise the buildings in the most advantageous and profitable manner, and it stands to reason that the more rooms they had the better would be their prospects. Apart from the hotels, which are standing in their own light in not catering for a larger hoarding custom, there is a good opening for an up-fco-data hotel on the lines of some of the large and well-ap-pointed establishments at Rotorua and Te Aroha and the house at Pipiriki. Erected near the seaside, conducted on efficient lines, such a place would, we feel sure, pay from its inception, oven under present conditions. The wonder to us is that the opening has not been seized before- now. Here is an opportunity for local or outside enterprise. If it is not availed of shortly, advances should be made to outside investors with a view to interesting themselves in the project. Should New Plymouth move,, as many feel sure it is on the eve of doing, there will be scope for many establishments of the kind. The man or company, however, that "gets in" now can be certain of a splendid return. As a watering-place and holiday ccntro no place in the Dominion—not even the greatly-boomed Rotorua excels New Plymouth, and it only remains for its claims to be properly put before the outside public, as is being f ] ono by the alert Expansion and Tourist League, to divert a great proportion of the traffic hither. If private enterprise, local or outside, is unequal to the filling of the essential need we have indicated, then it becomes the duty of local citizens to immediately interest themselves in the project and carry it to a successful conclusion.