Shoalhaven City Council is set to unveil its new visitor information strategy, designed to deliver more customer-focussed services for tourists and increased exposure for local tourism businesses.

Mr Milburn said the new strategy will re-allocate tourism funds to deliver a wider variety of innovative visitor services, centred on encouraging visitors to spend more time and more holiday dollars in the region.

The change in direction will see council sell the current tourist centre site in Pleasant Way and the adjoining historic Graham Lodge.

It will relocate the tourist centre into the Shoalhaven Entertainment Centre.

The move will see the centre in a modern premises and will also incorporate new digital information kiosks.

“This is one part of a major change for visitor services,” he said.

“The change is due to the decline in people actually visiting the tourist centre.

“The centre only attracted 40,000 people last year, of 2.7 million visitors.

“That’s 1.8 per cent of the visitors. But the centre takes up 18 per cent of the tourism budget.

“It is an industry trend. There has been a 20 per cent decline in people using stand alone visitor information centres in the past seven years.”

The Nowra centre has had a 33 per cent reduction from 2014-2015.

“We believe there has to be new ways to deliver visitor services,” he said.

“This is what we are trying to do. We have surveyed tourism providers and they want to see more services across the region and more staff out and about.

“Tourism staff will have more face-to-face contact with tourism operators and businesses.”

He said by moving the visitors centre into the entertainment centre, council could combine and multi task staff.

“The centre itself will provide a much better first impression for visiting tourists,” he said.

“People can come here, they will still be able to get tourism information. They can book accommodation, book tickets for a show, get information and brochures or get something from the cafe.

“They will be able to do it through staff or new digital kiosks. Free wi-fi is also available and they can also print off information from the kiosks.”

Staff will be accommodated in four work stations installed into the box office area.

Mr Milburn said the contentious issue of parking had been addressed.

“The 13 parking spaces on the northern side of the entertainment centre will only be hour long stays, meaning they will not be taken all day,” he said.

“We have allocated a specific parking area for RVs and camper trailers in front of the council building to the east of the entertainment centre.

“We can fit a minimum of four in there at any one time not problem at all.

“Interestingly the car parking at the old centre only had six cars per hour on average, and two RVs or vans every half day.

“There is also additional caravan parking at the old gas works site further down Bridge Road.

“The fact is, there were not a lot of vehicles parking or coming into the old centre.

“Having the centre on this side of the highway also allows us to continue the revitalisation of the Nowra CBD by funnelling the traffic from the centre back into the town centre.”

Tourism manager Coralie Bell said the new customer-centric strategy constitutes a genuine reallocation, not reduction of tourism funding.

“The changes will not affect staffing levels and our team has been supportive of this new approach,” she said.

“The staff have been cross training for a couple of months to be able to handle both roles.

“We are recognised as one of Australia’s iconic destinations and transitioning into a new rage of relevant services for visitors will help sustain our tourism industry, which in turn will support the local economy.”

It is anticipated the tourism centre move will be made mid June. New signage will also be installed to direct visitors to the new location.

Long term plans include a mobile van at key locations and events and a volunteer visitor ambassador program.