In August 2026 the visitor information centre in Tully, in far north Queensland, closed its doors. The ABC reported it in September alongside a wider story: councils weighing the cost of centres, which can run to about $240,000 a year in insurance, maintenance and rates, against what they deliver (ABC News, September 2026⁠ (opens in a new tab)).

The same story carried the counter-evidence. A 2023 review by Painted Dog Research for Tourism WA found that people who visited a visitor information centre in regional Western Australia spent $150 more in the region, and that centres led to $261 million more tourist spending in the state that year. And Wayne Clift, who manages Queensland’s accredited visitor information centre network, put the challenge plainly: “Whilst everybody thinks the digital has all the answers, clearly it doesn’t.” Centres that don’t “insert themselves into the digital world”, he said, “will be irrelevant”.

Whether a town keeps its centre is a council’s decision, and this article doesn’t second-guess any of them. It is about something every destination can act on either way: the knowledge inside a visitor centre is some of the most valuable content a region has, and most of it never reaches the website.

What a centre knows that the website doesn’t

Stand at a visitor centre counter for a morning and listen: the questions are rarely about attractions, and mostly about conditions and judgement.

  • Is the road to the falls sealed all the way, and is it passable after last night’s rain?
  • Which bakery opens on a Monday?
  • We have two hours and a seven-year-old. What should we do?
  • Is the walk to the lookout steep? My mother uses a stick.
  • Where can we park a caravan in town?
  • Is the beach patrolled this week?

A volunteer answers each in seconds, from local knowledge that is current to the week. Most destination websites answer none of them. They describe the falls beautifully and say nothing about the road.

Those answers are also what AI assistants look for. A Visitor who asks an assistant whether the falls road is passable after rain gets whatever the web says. If the only source that knows is a volunteer’s memory, the assistant guesses, and it guesses with confidence. Every counter answer you publish, with its season and date, is one an assistant can repeat correctly, long after the centre has closed for the evening.

How to capture it

If your region has centres, they are the best research tool you own. If it is losing one, the knowledge leaves with the last volunteers. Either way, the method is the same.

  1. Log the questions for a month. A paper tally at the counter is enough: the question, roughly worded, and how often it comes up. Two or three busy weekends will give you most of the list.
  2. Interview the long-serving volunteers. Ask them for the answers they give most often, the mistakes Visitors make, and the places they send people when the obvious one is full.
  3. Turn the answers into pages. Place each answer where a Visitor will look, instead of on one “FAQ” page: road conditions on the drive page, opening days on the Products, the steepness of the walk on the walk’s page, caravan parking on the town page.
  4. Name the season. Volunteer answers are seasonal. “The river crossing closes most wet seasons” is the kind of sentence that saves a wasted day, and it needs a date on it.
  5. Keep a loop. Ask the centre to tell you, each month, which questions the website failed to answer, and work through them as your content backlog.

Make the centres that stay easier to use

The Painted Dog figures suggest a centre adds spending when people use it, so the website’s job is also to send people there.

  • Put each centre on the website as a place with a purpose: opening hours, what it offers (bookings, maps, local produce, accessible toilets, a quiet place to sit out of the afternoon heat) and where to park.
  • Link it from the pages where a Visitor is most likely to need a human: the multi-day drive, the national park, the accessibility page.
  • Let the centre’s staff update their own hours and notices. A centre whose web page says it is open on public holidays when it isn’t does more harm than none.

What about chat assistants?

Some regions are asking whether an AI assistant on the website can do the counter’s job. It can do part of it. An assistant answers at 10pm, in the Visitor’s own words, and it can draw on everything the site holds. It can’t know that the bakery is shut this week for a family wedding, unless someone has told the website. An assistant is only as current as the content behind it, which brings you back to capturing the volunteers’ knowledge first.

If you consider one, look for three things: it answers only from your own content, it hands over to a person when it should, and it tells the Visitor clearly that it is an assistant.

On Roam

On Roam, your team adds and edits pages with the page builder, so the answers from the counter can become pages without a developer. Concierge AI, a live add-on, answers Visitors from your own Products, events and stories, and hands over to your team when a person is needed, so it suits teams who can answer those handovers. See how Concierge AI works.

For how assistants read the answers you publish, see How an AI assistant reads a destination page.