Tahiti To Go Up

New Hotel For

On Historic Site

Tahiti, which already has

ibout a dozen tourist hotels, is o get a new one soon at Faharaa, a magnificent site about miles east of Papeete. rAHARAA, a steep headland about 250 ft high, overlooks Matavai Jay, where Wallis, Cook, Bligh and >ther early European explorers an chored and where much of the darlon Brando version of Mutiny on he Bounty was filmed. Taharaa also commands a spectacular view of the icighbouring island of Moorea.

The new hotel, to cost about SUSS nillion, will be built with French md American capital. It will be in style, with 200 air conditioned rooms in 10 low tiers climbing the face of the promontory fom sea level to the plateau at the op.

In effect, the hotel will be 10 toreys high. But as each storey vill be separate from the next, local milding regulations, limiting the leight of buildings to two-thirds of l coconut tree, will not be infringed.

Fast lifts will take guests from the >ottom of the headland to the plateau it the top, where the reception desk, cwimming pool and restaurant for tOO guests will be situated.

American president

The hotel will be built by a "rench-registered company, Societe -loteliere de Taharaa, of which Mr. bseph M. Long, of San Francisco, is resident. Mr. Long is reported to lold 60 per cent, of the shares. The )ther shareholders are Pan American World Airways (27 per cent.) and he French airline, UTA (13 per The Intercontinental Hotel Cor mration, a subsidiary of PanAm, will ■un the hotel. It will be the second lotel under its control in the South Pacific —the other being the Pago Pago Intercontinental in American Samoa.

Architects for the hotel are Wimberly, Whisenand, Allison and Fong, of Honolulu, and Michel Prevot 3f Tahiti. Both American and French :ontractors will take part in the con struction, which is to be co-ordinated by Swinerton and Walberg, of San Francisco.

Messrs. Wimberly, Whisenand, Allison and Tong were the designers of the Pago Pago Intercontinental, the new 108-room hotel at Yanuca Island, Fiji, and the Hotel Tahiti in Papeete.

Work on the Taharaa is due to begin in April. The hotel is expected to take its first guests towards the end of 1968 or early in 1969.

A TOTAL of 16,200 tourists visited Tahiti in 1966 against 14,830 in 1965, 10,406 in 1962 and 1,472 in 1959. Last year’s total was about 1,800 lower than had been expected.

The average length of stay of each tourist was also lower than in the previous year—6i days compared with seven; and the amount of money spent by them was less—397 million French Pacific francs compared with 407 million in 1965.

The island’s high prices are seen as one of the main causes of the falling revenue from tourism.

AIR NEW ZEALAND will resume services to Tahiti in November.

By extending the flights through the French territory to Los Angeles, this will give it a second route across the Pacific to North America.

The airline now operates twice weekly from Sydney through Auck land and Honolulu to Los Angeles.

It also plans to resume its DCS jet service from Auckland through Sydney to Singapore in October or November. The actual date will de pend on delivery of its two new DCBs, due to become available later this year.

When its second trans-Pacific route

opens, Air NZ will be again operat ing to Tahiti for the first time in three years.

In 1951 it was the first airline to introduce scheduled commercial flights there, using Solent flyingboats on its Coral Route through Fiji, Western Samoa and the Cook Islands.

Subsequently operated by Electras, this service was withdrawn in 1964.

The DCBs with which Air NZ will resume the service will leave Sydney at 6.15 p.m. on Sundays and operate from Auckland direct to Papeete and on to Los Angeles. The south-bound flights on this route will leave Los Angeles at 8 p.m. on Fri days and reach Sydney at 10.5 a.m. on Sundays.

This service will bring the airline’s island destinations in the Pacific to six—Hawaii, Fiji, American Samoa, New Caledonia, Norfolk and Tahiti.

Air New Zealand is also studying the possibilities of a direct air link between Auckland and Pago Pago.

Pago Pago is growing in significance as an important airport serving the traffic between Western Samoa and New Zealand. It is at present served by Air New Zealand with DCS flights from Auckland through Fiji.

Captain Waliis, the European dis coverer of Tahiti, called the site of Tahiti's newest hotel "Skirmish Hill" because it figured in a battle be tween his men and the Tahitians soon after his arrival in Matavai Bay in 1767. Captain Cook later called the site One Tree Hill, and it was by that name that it was known for some years. An engraving of the battle of "Skirmish Hill" (reproduced

above) appeared in Hawkesworth's

"Voyages" in 1773. The new hotel site was thus one of the first places in Tahiti to be pictured in a book.