Where are the tourists?

A visitors information center on Route 20 has seen a sharp drop in the number of tourists who have stopped by to find information about the Charlottesville area’s attractions.

The tourist information center — which is operated by the Charlottesville-Albemarle Convention & Visitors Bureau — saw its visitation drop by 90 percent in August as compared to last August.

In August 2007, there were 10,058 visitors to the facility. Last month, there were 998.

“We have seen a decline out there,” said Allie Baer, interim executive director of the tourism bureau, which receives funding from Charlottesville and Albemarle County.

The Route 20 tourist information office has seen a 21 percent decrease in visitors so far in 2008 compared with the same period last year.

While the tourism bureau has seen a dramatic decrease in visitation at its Route 20 office, it reports a steady increase at its tourist information office in the transit center on the Downtown Mall. The organization saw a 74 percent increase in tourist visitation at its downtown facility in August. For all of 2008, there has been a 16.5 percent increase in visitation over the previous year.

So far in 2008, there have been 26,159 visitors to the tourism bureau’s downtown office. That marks an increase of 5,242 visitors over 2007 year to date.

“We’re trying to capture more of the visitors downtown,” Baer said.

The tourism bureau’s board is scheduled to meet Sept. 16 to decide the fate of the Route 20 facility. The board’s executive committee has recommended that it be closed permanently.

“The recommendation was that it be closed by the end of the year,” said Chris Engel, vice-chair of the tourism board and Charlottesville’s assistant director of economic development. “My guess is that it will be approved.”

Piedmont Virginia Community College has been seeking to convert the visitors center facility into a workforce development center. However, nothing has yet been finalized. Anita Showers, a PVCC spokeswoman, said Friday that negotiations with Charlottesville and Albemarle County, which jointly own the building, are ongoing.

The primary reason for the Route 20 facility’s lack of tourist traffic is that the Thomas Jefferson Foundation — which owns and operates Monticello — shuttered its own next-door visitors center June 8.

Monticello is constructing its 42,000-square-foot Thomas Jefferson Visitor Center and Smith Education Center. Crews are working to move all of the exhibits and artifacts from Monticello’s old visitors center into the new facility. Monticello’s new visitors center is set open in November.

As part of Monticello’s closing of its visitors center, it hired a contractor to cover a portion of all nine street signs that directed motorists to the facility.

Ann H. Taylor, executive vice president of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, said that discussions are ongoing to decide what sort of presence the tourism bureau would have at Monticello’s new visitors center. One idea, she said, is for the tourism bureau to install a touch-screen kiosk outside the center’s gallery. The kiosk would provide tourists with information about other local attractions, restaurants, hotels and more. A similar kiosk has been installed at Montpelier in Orange County.

Taylor said that a kiosk at Monticello’s new facility would greatly increase the number of tourists who would receive information about local sites. Only 20 percent to 30 percent of Monticello’s 450,000 annual visitors stopped by its old visitors center, she said.

Engel said that locating a kiosk on-site at Monticello makes sense.

“All indications are that electronic kiosks are an upcoming trend,” he said. “We are feeling pretty confident that they would work well.”

The tourism bureau recently expanded the hours of operation for its downtown office, Baer said. Now the facility is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day.

The Route 20 facility is open from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on weekdays and Saturdays and 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Sundays.