Editorial: Take every opportunity to sell Hawke's Bay

Andrew Austin, Editor of Hawke's Bay Today.

I had the opportunity to give Hawke's Bay a good plug on Newstalk ZB yesterday morning.

I appeared on the Andrew Dickens Sunday Cafe show in a segment called the press conference. It basically consists of host Andrew Dickens talking to editors from the NZME group of newspapers. NZME owns Hawke's Bay Today, the NZ Herald and Newstalk ZB. My fellow panellist yesterday was Shayne Currie, the managing editor of NZME.

The chat started off looking at an item in Hawke's Bay Today Weekend on Saturday. Our local historian Michael Fowler wrote a great column about early tourism in the Bay.

Michael, in his usual meticulous way, found that Napier's charms and appeal to tourists had been written about in the 1800s. It was a fascinating article and it was good to chat about it on air. Michael Fowler wrote that in 1886, James Inglis, a visitor from Australia, said Napier was "the Malta of the southern seas". There was also a mention of American writer Mark Twain being a fan of Napier.

It sparked off a discussion about the good things about Napier and I said I could understand that those early tourists were quite taken with the magnificent view it was looking from Marine Parade over the bay to Cape Kidnappers.

It was good to share what we have with the rest of the country and it is good to see, based on tourism figures, that more and more people are coming here to enjoy not only the natural beauty of the place, but also the events that are being held here.

A recent good example was the highly successful F.A.W.C. But there is so much more happening in the Bay and it is up to us to get the word out at every opportunity.

Tourism grows our economy and we are on a roll at the moment so let's keep the momentum going.