Proposed Second

Suva Misses

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Proposed Second Hotel for Lautoka

A CONDITIONAL certificate to build another hotel at Lautoka, Fiji, was granted March 6 to Mr. R.

Grayson, at present of Sydney.

Under the conditions of the certificate, the hotel has to be built within two years.

In Sydney, in May, Mr. Grayson said that the hotel will be called the Trade Winds Hotel and will be constructed on land at the corner of Tavewa Ave. and Verona St., Lautoka. It is expected that when completed, the hotel with land, licence and stock, will have cost £120,000.

Residents of Fiji will shortly be invited to subscribe some of this capital when the venture is turned into a public company.

Plans provide for an attractive, cement, double-storey building with large lounge and bar space, a beer garden, courtyard gardens, two dining rooms, and, initially, 13 double bedrooms, each with its own bath, etc., on the top floor. Other bedrooms will be added later.

Accommodation and services pro vided will be to the standard re quired by discriminating overseas visitors.

It is hoped to begin building early in 1957. The bar should be operat ing within six months and the rest of the building complete in from six to nine months after that.

Mr. Grayson, who has had long experience in hotels in Western Australia and in NSW, expects to manage the hotel personally.

When asked why the hotel went to Lautoka and not to Suva, where the need for first-class hotel accom modation is desperate, he said that he first considered Suva but that any possible building site for such an hotel was so highly priced that building a high-class hotel in that city was economically unsound