Monterey Visitors Center quietly closes down; an app will soon take its place.

The Monterey Visitors Center that welcomed hundreds and thousands of tourists for over 20 years was quietly shut down in July, after usage dropped down dramatically, even before the Covid-19 pandemic.

The center was located near the corner of Del Monte Avenue and Camino El Estero, in El Estero Park. Inside the adobe building visitors could find dozens of pamphlets about local attractions and hear information from helpful staff.

Over the last six to seven years the number of visitors coming through the door significantly decreased, says Rob O'Keefe, president and CEO of the Monterey County Convention and Visitors Bureau, which ran the center.

"It was one of the tough decisions we had to make," he says.

Six years ago they had around 120,000 people walk in annually. Right before Covid-19 that number was down to 58,000. The costs of running the center were going up while usage was going down, O'Keefe adds. MCCVB was spending around $400,000 a year to staff and maintain it by the time the decision was made.

The bureau is now turning its focus to launching an app that will possibly reach more visitors digitally than the adobe "brick-and-mortar" building ever did. "We're going to where they are rather than making them come to us," O'Keefe says.

"Our goal is always to have visitors stay longer, do more and spend more," he says. An app will help them do that, by providing an easy way for visitors to get help through a chat function, plus provide them with information about attractions with links to specials offered by businesses. 

The app is still in the works and could be in use by this fall, O'Keefe says.