St. George's Visitor Information Centre Reports Uptick in Visitors

To kick off the November 2021 Town Council Meeting for the Town of St. George, town council invited a guest speaker to do a post-mortem on the perform of the town's visitor information centre after the summer tourism season. Paula Cox, who manages St. George's visitor information centre, provided an update to council.
 
"When I think about the visitor information centre and how we've run it for the last six years, we've had a dedicated space, dedicated staff and washroom facilities for guests," said Cox. "But this year, we ran it more informally and didn't have a dedicated space. We had information representatives who were there to answer questions, give directions and provide general information. He didn't have a space rented for us by the town. It would be better to have a dedicated space. I found that having an informal information centre meant nothing to the public. They expected it to be a traditional information centre. It wasn't as busy this year due to COVID-19, which made it less problematic. I still had two full-time students working, and there were a lot of people who came by for information. We didn't open 7-days a week; we just kept regular business hours." 

Cox said, despite COVID-19 being somewhat disruptive to the regular tourism season, summer 2021 was less stressful an experience than the first summer of the pandemic and tourism to the area was on the upswing after seeing a major drop in 2020. 

"It was also really nice to see people come from away," said Cox. "The first year during COVID-19, it was stressful to greet people from away, but this year, it was actually really nice to welcome people back from all over the world to our community, Over all, I think it was a good year, and it was a great opportunity to tell people about our community and to welcome many people back for a return visit."

In the second half of the November 2021 Town Council Meeting for Town of St. George, Town Clerk Jason Gaudet reported that the town staff have been focusing on finalizing the budget for 2022 as well as winterizing public works for the 2021-2022 season. The staff and the Southwest Service Commission continue to work on a municipal plan, and a storm drainage system is currently being implemented.