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Show Liquor Laws, Facilities and Attitudes Hinder Tourist Growth Agency Says Utah's antiquated liquor laws, a lack of quality resort hotels, motels, and family restaurants, and the attitude many Utahns have regarding travelers to their state are greatly hampering efforts by Travel Utah, Inc., to make tourism Utah's number one industry, Ronald E. McMil-lin, McMil-lin, Executive Vice President and General Manager of the statewide organization charg-' charg-' ed Monday. A recent Travel Utah survey sur-vey indicates that travelers visiitng Utah consider our state's liquor laws ridiculous and inconvenient. Travel Utah believes that most liquor questions which come from: visiting tourists are not meant to degrade our liquor laws, but rather simply because they want to understand them. Travel Utah members and Utah businessmen must take a positive approach toward our explanations to visitors that liquor is available, and in most cases, does not require re-quire a great deal of effort on the part of the visitor to acquire ac-quire something to drink, Mr. McMillin said. "It would be nice, however, if we could some time in the future provide pro-vide our visiting friends the same extension of his living room, which we offer residents, res-idents, in the form of a private pri-vate club membership while he visits the state of Utah to fulfill his entertainment needs," the director said. "If Utah is to become a destination rather than a pass-through state, we must have many more hotels, motels, mo-tels, and restaurants. The recent Travel Utah survey showed that visitors to our state were disappointed with the quality of many of our motels and restaurants. The state's liquor laws discourage discour-age many major hotel chains from building in Utah," Mr. McMillin said. "Utah's parks and recreational areas will be of no economic benefit to the state without facilities, services, ser-vices, and entertainment for tourists," he said. Mr, McMillin, speaking to a Salt Lake Kiwanis Club meeting, stated that Travel Utah will continue to work to overcome the disadvantages disadvantag-es that developers in Utah now face. Most of Utah's choice lands are owned by the Government and the development de-velopment of these areas are. strangled in the' red tape of government rules and regulations. regu-lations. Utah presently ranks, forty-second in the United Stajes in number of rooms available for tourists. Mr. McMillin stated that the new Utah Travel Investment Advisory Ad-visory Board is attempting to locate funds for developers . in Utah.- . Every Utahn must be educated ed-ucated to realize that his . survival depends a great deal upon his ability to treat the tourist as a guest and companion com-panion rather than an enemy. "We ' must be .willing to share with the tourist the wonders of our state, therefore, there-fore, letting him help improve im-prove the standard of living we enjoy," McMillin said. "We are often told we have an image problem," he said. "If Utahns were to truly act their part as hosts, taking more interest in our guests and telling them with more enthusiasm about the great things in our state to see, ve would indeed begin to conquer this problem of .image. Such a basic awareness aware-ness would also help to form a public and" state resolve to recognize the value of the tourist industry over ether tjjjes of business or industrial indus-trial growth," McMillin said. Other trends pointed out by the survey were that Utah room rates are low in comparison com-parison to other states, there is a lack of quality trailer parks and family campgrounds, camp-grounds, visitors made repeated re-peated requests for maps and in-state literature, service employees were friendly but not informative, and many tourists made wrong turns and were unable to find tourist tour-ist attractions due to lack of adequate sinage on Utah highways. |