The Tourist Trade

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 459, 9 April 1948, Page 5

The Tourist Trade

HERE is not much harm in wishing that some of the millions of dollars rich tourists now spend in Europe could be spent in New Zealand. Up to a point itis as legitimate, and as sensible, to sell our scenery, and even our social experiments, as to sell our mutton and our wool. But we should be no less careful in ‘one case than in the other. We sell our farm produce to customers with whom we wish to establish and maintain good relations; beginning with the members of our own political family. We should do the same with our climate and our scenery. We certainly want trade with tourists; but we want it most of all with the right kind of tourists-travel- . lers whose way of life is not too remote from our own, and who come here for reasons not too unlike our own when we ourselves go abroad. It will do us no harm to be asked to provide better hotels, better railway carriages, better facilities for rest and refreshment generally, but these things should be provided not so much because tourists demand them as because they are deman- ded by ourselves in the march of time. If we need not be ashamed of the fact that we have not yet advanced very far in the luxury trades, we must not stay where we are now that the time has come to move forward. But. it would be better to remain austere and shabby than to prostrate ourselves before wealth. The New Zealander we must never allow to be born is the Antipodean equivalent of some of the Mediterranean and Levantine types our soldiers met during the war. Let us advertise for tourists, and cater for them, but let us meet them on mutually respectful terms-with our hats on, and our backs straight, and no _hands extended for gratuities.