The annual budget for the City of Estevan always has some interesting items that generate discussion.
People want to know how much their property taxes will go up, how much their utility bills will be going up, which roads will be repaired, and which other capital projects will be taking place.
One of the more interesting items, though, is the move to close and sell the visitor information centre west of Estevan, which has been the site of tourism services in the community for many years, and to shift those tourism services to the former concession area at the Estevan Leisure Centre.
As music icon Bob Dylan once wrote, the times they are a changin’.
Certainly, the city’s move reflects shifting trends in tourism. Once upon a time, tourism booths, such as the log cabin that has served as the local visitor centre for nearly a decade, were an important place in a community’s tourism services.
It was a place where people could pick up maps or brochures on attractions, and talk to staff about upcoming events.
But now that we’re living in an online world, with the prevalence of smartphones and an abundance of information at our fingertips, it results in a significant decline in the number of visitors to those information centres.
The number of visitors to Estevan’s tourism booth dropped from about 2,097 in 2016 to 1,197 last year.
There are those who don’t have a smart phone, or aren’t tech savvy, and still require the services of an information centre, but is it worth offering such a service, on the taxpayer’s dime, for under 1,200 people a year?
There’s a good case to be made for giving the visitor information centre one more year, to see if 2017’s numbers were a fluke, but signs point to continued downward trends in the number of visitors.
We’ll see if shifting tourism operations to the leisure centre actually makes a difference. It will likely be better for those who are new to the community, and are looking for information on attractions and events in the Estevan area, or on tourist sites in other parts of the province.
Hopefully, it will also create more interest in the energy tours currently offered through Tourism Estevan.
It will also be a positive to have something in the old leisure centre concession, rather than the empty space that exists now.
As for the diminishing number of people who needed the tourism booth’s services, who might want to stop for information or simply chit-chat, those people will likely just drive through Estevan.
So the number of visitors to our new tourism information area might not be much at all.
But it will still be better than having a tourism booth outside of the city that attracts a little more than 1,000 people a year.
