EUROBODALLA Shire Council has released to its tourism staff details of its radical plans to outsource or lease out the visitor information centres at Narooma and Batemans Bay.
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The proposal to divest itself from the centres involves alternatives ranging from private leasing of the Narooma building to having a "pop-up" mobile tourism van and a seven-day call centre.
A meeting was held at Moruya on Tuesday with visitor information centre staff, of which there are nine split between Narooma and Batemans Bay visitor centres.
The Moruya visitor centre is based at that town’s library and so would not be impacted on by the proposal.
Employees were told that under the proposal that the centres would be replaced with a single-person call centre based at the council office in Moruya and also a mobile van or bus travelling around the shire in high traffic areas at peak times.
A motion to put the proposal out for public discussion goes to councillors at their meeting next Tuesday.
Employees questioned whether closing visitor centres and replacing them with a call centre and mobile van had been tried anywhere else, and were told no and that the proposal had been developed internally by council management.
While the Batemans Bay visitor centre could be sold, the Narooma centre is apparently on Crown Land and as such would more likely be leased to a private operator.
The Narooma visitor centre also houses the historic Montague Island and lighthouse display, and one option for the building and its associated tourism information to be operated either as a private business, or even staffed by volunteers.
Council apparently believes it can save $160,000 through the closures, which they want to reinvest back into digital marketing, with a net savings of $20,000.
Reaction to proposal
The Narooma News in the weeks ahead will attempt to gauge the response of the community and tourism-reliant businesses to the proposal.
Narooma Chamber of Commerce president Orit Karny Winters said she was totally opposed to the closures and had already put forward a proposal to council on how to make the centres more profitable.
“Closure is not an option,” she said. “If they want to lease it out, then let the chambers of commerce take them over.”
Closing the centres would be negative not only in terms of employment with the actual staff losing jobs but also for the loss of tourists that might stop and stay, while the Narooma building itself was purpose built for tourism.
Former Eurobodalla mayor and Narooma Blues Festival owner Neil Mumme said he could see both sides of the argument.
“We’ve had great service from the visitor information centres over the last 18 years and I really feel for the employees,” Mr Mumme said.
But while there were local businesses such as fishing charters that really relied on the visitor centres, it was a changing world where most people did their research before arriving at a destination, he said.
For instance, 90 per cent of Blues Festival tickets were sold online and he had just sent out the festival’s first electronic newsletter of the year to 6500 individual’s emails, and the newsletters had plenty of cross promotion of tourism attractions that blues fans could do while in Narooma.
He said was in the best interest of all tourism reliant businesses to do their own marketing and outreach these days anyway and there were so many methods to do just that.
