City's agreement with Chamber keeps Cambridge Visitor Centre alive

Saying the words "Okay Google" or "Hello Siri" into a mobile device means visitors to Cambridge rarely need the help of a hotel concierge, a map or a rack of brochures to help them find their way around.

It's one of the main reasons the City of Cambridge is testing out a self-serve visitor centre at the Cambridge Chamber of Commerce headquarters on Hespeler Road instead of renewing a full-service contract with the local business organization.

Council gave the green light to a $30,000 pilot project this week that will continue a service offered locally since the early '80s, but at a significantly reduced capacity to reflect declining demand.

The iconic, "tourist information" blue-and-white question-mark signs will remain up to direct visitors to the centre near Highway 401, but any questions they might have won't necessarily be answered by staff.

Up until last January, the Chamber operated the region's only visitor centre seven days a week, stocking the sunny entrance to its headquarters with brochures and maps from around the province and staffing it with people eager to highlight local attractions for anyone who asked.

That service ended last December when the annual, $166,000 contract with the city expired.

For the last nine months, the Chamber has informally bridged the gap by allowing anyone who happened to drop by a space to pick up brochures, use the washrooms and be on their way.

And although the brochure racks had diminished in size since the pandemic, Chamber president Greg Durocher says the centre still had a decent amount of people coming in asking what to do, where to dine, or where shop.

He believes the service helps strengthen the local economy and would like to see it continue, but admits traffic to the centre is significantly less than it was before the pandemic. 

When tourism dropped off a cliff four years ago, many Ontario municipalities stopped publishing maps, brochures and magazines. Durocher says their reliance on printed marketing material has been slow to make a comeback.

Earlier this year the province also stopped sending free Ontario maps to the centre, instead offering them for purchase online at $4.95 each.

But technology dealt the biggest blow.

Mobile devices and GPS navigation make visitor centres everywhere somewhat obsolete.

Durocher noticed the drop in traffic to the centre before the pandemic. People who continued to use the service were also noticeably older.

Long gone are the days when the Cambridge Visitor Centre welcomed as many as 120,000 people a year. 

Durocher is still hopeful the city sees the value of the visitor centre as it figures out how to capitalize on the strength of local tourism in consultation with Explore Waterloo Region and local hotels, which contribute to the city's municipal accommodation tax fund to support tourism marketing.

"When you make people feel good, they spend money," Durocher says.

Cambridge's director of economic development Michael Launslager agrees and says the city will be assessing the value of the centre and all of its component pieces through next September.

He says the 12-month agreement with the Chamber means not only continuity of service, but a runway for the city to explore how the centre might be better utilized as Cambridge positions itself as a tourism draw.

Launslager adds the location, directly off the highway at the "gateway" to the city is ideal, but there are "peripheral pieces" like signage, visibility and access that also need to be explored.

CambridgeToday asked two front desk staff at the Cambridge Hotel and Conference Centre if they've ever directed staff to the Cambridge Visitor Centre just down the road and both said they didn't know it existed. They tell guests to use Google if they ask for local recommendations. 

Launslager says he's not surprised by that response.

"For us the job is to put forth a more cohesive and comprehensive marketing approach for Cambridge that looks at the industry more holistically."

"We have a lot of strong tourism assets that we want to do a better job of just drawing attention to telling that story."