The visitor center in Santa Rita Park will see some changes in staffing next year.
The center will be self-serve from January through May next year and, in April, the Durango Area Tourism Office will assess whether to staff the office based on the city’s sewage-treatment plant construction project, Executive Director Bob Kunkel said.
Construction staging for the new plant will happen on the field between Santa Rita Park Drive and U.S. Highway 550/160, near the chamber building.
The tourism office provides the staff for the information desk inside the Durango Chamber of Commerce building.
If the visitor center does not reopen, maps, brochures and bathrooms will still be available inside the building, but staff members will be moved to the Downtown Welcome Center, he said.
If the tourism office decides not to staff the Santa Rita Park center, Kunkel plans to work with the Colorado Department of Transportation on new signs to direct tourists to the Downtown Welcome Center.
He will also work with the city on spaces that will accommodate RVs downtown, he said.
There are about 54,000 people who stop into the Santa Rita center each year, but locals stopping in to use the bathroom likely inflate this count, he said.
The Durango Welcome Center has about 114,000 visitors each year.
“The people that come in downtown are, by far, mostly visitors,” Kunkel said.
James Wilkes, co-owner of Mountain Waters Rafting, prints brochures for those who come to Durango for larger attractions, such as the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad, and are looking for other ways to spend their time.
It’s free for him to advertise in the Santa Rita center as a chamber member and it seems heavily used in the spring and summer, he said.
“I think it is a pretty useful place. I hope they staff it in the summer,” Wilkes said.
Outlaw Tours owner Tom Barnes also uses brochures for marketing and has had customers come in with brochures that are several years old, proving they are effective, he said.
“We’d definitely like it to continue to be staffed,” he said, of the Santa Rita center.
He would also like to see multiple welcome centers where visitors could find information.
The tourism office is exploring installing kiosks at key locations that tourists could use to video chat with a Welcome Center staff member. The kiosks could be used in places such as the Durango-La Plata County Airport and Purgatory Resort.
“We’ve just started looking into that,” he said.
mshinn@durangoherald.com
