New Hotels

For Lae

From a Lae Correspondent Lae at long last is to get adequate first-class accommoda tion.

THE announcement that an ultra modern hotel, approved some 18 months, and which will cost something like £250,000 unfurnished, is to be built at long last, has given encouragement to those planning for a tourist industry of the future.

And. added to this, comes a notice that work on an £BO,OOO air con ditioned motel will also start in January on land bordered by ANGAU Memorial Hospital, Mark ham Road—just at the end of the airport—and the Botanic Gardens. A start will be made on the hotel some time in the new year.

Lae is one Territory town where tourist accommodation is badly needed. What we have, is inadequate —and often embarrassing for a town which is the terminus of the Aus tralia-New Guinea air service, and the port for the rapidly expanding Morobe and Eastern Highlands, The dearth of sufficient decent accom modation here has helped retard the New Guinea tourist industry.

Trans-Air Lodge, originally built by Qantas and now conducted by TAA, offers accommodation as good as anywhere else in Papua-New Guinea, but only airline passengers in transit, and airline crews, may stay there.

Handy To Airport

Lae's only hotel, the Cecil, has more than 40 bedrooms, from singles to family rooms, with some air con ditioned rooms, but it cannot be pre sented as a first class hotel.

The new hotel planned for Lae will be built on two levels.

The land it will occupy is between the Returned Servicemen’s Club and the shopping and business centre, fronting First Street, to Markham Road, almost directly opposite the

terminal at the airport. The general bar will be on the lower level.

A lease for the hotel was taken out in mid-1964, by a subsidiary of Steamships Trading Company Pty.

Ltd.—Lae Hotels Pty. Ltd.

The conditions of the lease called for improvements to the value of £50,000 to be made within two years.

The hotel will be modem in every respect, and it is known that the director responsible for the project, Mr. Don Harvey, spent a consider able amount of time in Australia in 1965 choosing fittings and furnishings for it.

The motel at Lae is to be built and owned by Lae builder, Mr. Neil Leydon, who will leave the running of the motel to experts—Australian Motel Industries.

Mr. Leydon said recently he had come to an arrangement with Aus tralian Motels and he was sure that the motel at Lae would be every thing a tourist or business visitor to the Territory would expect.

The motel will comprise 30 units initially but the plans allow for future extension. All of the units will be air conditioned, and each will contain a single and double bed.