THE TOURIST TRADE
Sir.-Permit me to offer respectful and cordial agreement with your leading article, "The Tourist Trade." You have well expressed something which many of us have thought but none have previously expressed at all. The Tourist Trade can have a debasing influence entirely out of keeping with the dignity of man. Relationships with tourists are often a derisive caricature of hospitality, and thoroughly bad for both giver and taker. } But my own modest endeavours to tour this country have convinced me also that what is needed is less of the mock Grecian columns (in plaster) and a bit more of real honest service. This is something one never could buy, and it never even happens until one .reaches the deep South or the far West, say Garston or Greymouth. In the North Island there is mostly an impudent travesty of service. Reservations in hotels ‘are forgotten or denied, passengers on the ferries are kept hanging about on open windswept wharves without seating accommodation for an hour at a time. Meals are served anyhow and not at call after 7 p.m. Railway refreshment rooms and public bars are only for the young in the very lustihood of their powers. The less said about restaurants the better. Porters are not to be found when they are wanted on ‘the railways, and taxis decide for and against after hearing your destination. You can’t get a shower, a shoe shine, a shave, or a shampoo. I haven’t much space left so I'll say nothing of the licensing laws which allow a drink when you don’t want one and forbid it when you do, — The system of tipping has been criticised, but to those who service the New Zealand tourist, is reserved the refinement of taking the tip and still not giving the service; as if the indignity of taking the tip were enough without doing anything absolutely menial as well. This will do just now. But if any association or body of people feels it’s not justly treated, I’ll give specific cases.
HOME-LOVER
(Wellington).
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 461, 23 April 1948, Page 5
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342THE TOURIST TRADE New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 461, 23 April 1948, Page 5
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