The decision was briefly announced with the organisation’s chief executive officer Mellisa Gillies rushing through a one powerpoint slide that stated EMT would be ending face-to-face services after August 31 and that the official lease would end in December 2024.
Ms Gillies, who was leading the meeting, said it was “due to funding being reduced” by the relevant councils.
Although it was a brief section of the presentation, the Visitor Information Centre was a hot topic revisited by members and taking up a bulk of the question-and-answer section of the evening.
With a lot of passion about the topic, there also came a lot of questions by those in attendance. Were there any other options considered before deciding to pull out of the role? Was it true that people had been made redundant? Why was this decision being made? Was there time or the ability for people to change EMT’s mind?
As the questions were asked, the general tone of the room was disappointment, anger and frankly bewilderment at the idea that a town reliant on tourism would just shut down its visitor information centre.
Most of these questions were answered by EMT chair Dean Oberin, who said that “alternative options” had been considered, but the board did not believe them to be of interest to the members.
The main alternative option was for EMT to make up the shortfall by having “the membership funding it”.
Mr Oberin said this would require raising EMT member fees to $1700.
It was maintained by Mr Oberin that there was “no appetite for face-to-face visitor services” from the two councils and that it was essentially out of EMT’s hands.
This was something that Mr Oberin said had been discussed for the past 12 to 18 months.
Campapse Shire’s recently appointed director of communities Jo Bradshaw was present at the meeting and briefly spoke.
When asked what the council’s plan was, she was unable to give a direct answer due to being in the “middle of developing a tourism strategy”.
Ms Bradshaw said the Visitor Information Centre closure was not something that she felt comfortable speaking about as a council representative.
EMT denied that during the time of that meeting that any employee had been made redundant and said that the people who worked in the Visitor Information Centre were in the room.
As the meeting came to a close, it was clear that people in the room were still unhappy about the matter and they had more questions than answers.
