Expiring contracts between the City of St. Albert and the St. Albert Chamber of Commerce call into question the future of St. Albert's Visitor Welcome Centre.
The visitor centre, located on St. Albert Trail when entering the city from the south, is where tourists (and residents) can ask questions about the city, and find brochures, pamphlets, and maps. The building, which also doubles as the St. Albert and District Chamber of Commerce's office, was built in 1993.
Since the summer of 2014 the visitor centre has been staffed and operated solely by the chamber, with the city providing annual funding to assist with costs. Prior to that summer, the building also housed the city's economic development staff, until the department moved to the St. Albert Business Centre located on Sir Winston Churchill Drive near the St. Albert Curling Club.
The city and the chamber's current service agreement for operating the visitor centre was signed in 2021, and entailed the city providing the chamber $30,000 per year; however, that agreement is set to expire at the end of April.
In an email, the city's director of economic development, Mike Erickson, said any future agreement for tourism information and welcome services like those currently being provided by the chamber would have to go through a competitive bid process.
“Moving forward, administration will consider visitor economy and tourism initiatives that provide best value and support to St. Albert’s local visitor and tourism sector,” Erickson said. “Visitors and tourists are overwhelmingly shifting to researching and gathering their travel information online.”
“As a result, demand for in-person visitor information is decreasing.”
The number of people going to the visitor centre for information about St. Albert has decreased slightly in recent years, as 989 people, including local and Edmonton-area residents, attended the centre between February 2019 and January 2020, while 846 people visited the centre in 2023, according to data collected by the centre.
Those visitor totals don't include those who stopped in at the chamber's visitor information tent at the St. Albert Farmers' Market or the annual Lifestyle Expo.
The internet may have replaced some of the need for a visitor centre for some, but chamber executive director Shelly Nichol said having somewhere to go in person to find information is still an integral part of the local tourism industry.
“We feel strongly that [the visitor centre] is an important economic driver for St. Albert to attract the tourist economy,” Nichol said. “Anybody can go online and look at what Google says or what TripAdvisor says, but travellers now are looking for that hidden gem that nobody [except locals] know about.”
Nichol said the city's annual funding for operating the visitor centre goes toward the full-time staff member on-site, as well as two students the chamber hires every summer when the centre's operating hours expand.
Given the visitor centre also serves as the chamber's office, Nichol said the chamber would still provide tourist information and welcome services if the city stops providing funding, although the centre's hours would be reduced to match the chamber's Monday to Friday opening hours, which are 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
A lack of city funding for the visitor centre might also mean the chamber would have to decide whether it will continue operating the visitor centre's website and social media pages, Nichol said.
However, another issue at play is that the chamber's five-year lease with the city for the building expires in October, and a corresponding rent increase may price the chamber out of its office space.
“The chamber is looking at all options — do we continue to lease, do we have the option to purchase, should we consider maybe looking somewhere else — all of those things are definitely on the table,” Nichol said. “That's the information that we're gathering right now to be able to have an educated and informed discussion at the board level.”
Nichol, as well as city spokesperson Cory Sinclair, said the two parties are having preliminary discussions about the future of the visitor centre, and discussions will continue.
“We understand all municipalities are in the same position; every one of them is looking at every line item in their budget to say, 'Where can we save the taxpayers some money?'” Nichol said.
“We understand that they're looking at everything very intently, and with purpose, and that's what we would hope that they would do, [but] the chamber's position is that it is vitally important to our business community and our membership that we support the tourist economy.”
