Improvements At

Lae's Taa

Travel Lodge

From a Lae Correspondent The TAA Travel Lodge at

Lae—already considered by

most travellers as supplying among the best standards of accommodation in a Territory where high standards come

rarely—is being improved.

BUT it is doubtful if the people who most need to use the lodge will get the chance to sample the im provements.

The fact is that the lodge is taking a decreasing number of travellers and an increasing number of TAA staff, and the staff have first priority.

I understand that TAA would like to increase the number of rooms, but pressure from private enterprise has prevented this.

Narrow Attitude

Accommodation in Lae is scarce, but new hotels are planned and the view is that if TAA is allowed to give adequate service, then the lodge might take away future custom.

It is a narrow attitude which does not take any account of the travel ling public—and no account of a developing tourist industry.

Certainly TAA is not in the hotel business, but there is a difference between running a hotel for profit (and the bar trade) and supplying needed accommodation for genuine travellers as TAA attempts to do— and like Qantas did before it.