Mayor Bill Diak and members of the city council voted to end the Powell Museum’s role as the city’s official visitor center. The John Wesley Powell museum will continue as a museum. Their function as visitor center will be phased out over the next three to five years, the details of which will be worked out between the museum and the city in the coming weeks or months.

The city council made the decision during the city council meeting last Wednesday when the director of the Powell Museum, Cheri Brown, and some members of the museum’s board of directors submitted to council their budget for fiscal year 2019, which was $78,000.

Council member Dennis Warner suggested that the city reduce the city’s funding of the visitor’s center to zero within three to five years. He further recommended to city council and to members of the Powell Museum’s board that in the near future the museum function solely as a museum and fund their operations independently with corporate sponsorships and memberships.

The Powell Museum officially took over the role of Page’s visitor’s center in 2013 at which point they ended their corporate sponsorships.
Warner further suggested that visitor center functions, currently being done by staff and volunteers of the museum, could possibly be done with a phone app.

Brown argued that the visitors will still arrive at the museum. They’re directed there through billboards, signage and various social media sources.
“What are we supposed to do?” Brown asked Warner. “Just turn them away without helping them?”

The Powell Museum and Visitor Center services thousands of visitors a year, with the numbers rising each year as Page becomes increasingly popular as a tourist destination.

“A real live person can do so much more than an app can,” Brown told the Chronicle last Monday, much of which echoed what she told city council Wednesday night. “We do far more than just tell them how to get to Antelope Canyon and Horseshoe Bend or Wahweap. We greet our visitors with a smile. We can suggest many, many other options they can do while they’re here, whether its three hours or three days.

“We can tell them our favorite hikes, destinations, restaurants. And when they leave here with a new itinerary we can tell them to enjoy their stay in Page and to drive safely. An app can’t deliver such a comprehensive level of customer service and do it with warmth and smile, make you feel welcome and special.

“When you visit a town and you don’t know anyone and then you meet someone who can help you, it makes you remember that place with fondness. It’s the personal touch that makes the difference, and that’s important in Page. We don’t have the `quaint factor’ that other tourist towns have. We don’t have very many cute little shops, or streets.

“Tourism is Page’s bread and butter. What are we doing messing around with this?”

After an hour’s debate between city council members and Powell Museum board members the city council and Mayor voted unanimously (council members Mark Cormier and Darby McNutt were absent) for the museum to stop providing visitor’s center services for the city. It did approve $60,000 for the Powell Museum’s budget for FY 2019.

A few things will have to be done before the museum can reasonably cease its role as the city’s visitor’s center.

Several signs around Page, as well as several social media sites, list the museum as the Powell Museum and Visitor Center.

These will have to be changed so the flood of visitors will no longer be funneled to the museum.