WANGARATTA'S Visitor Information Centre will be relocated from Murphy Street to the Wangaratta Performing Arts and Convention Centre (WPACC) in early April.

Rural City of Wangaratta director of sustainability and culture, Stephen Swart, said council currently leased the Murphy Street building, which was formerly the city's library, and would hand it back to the Department of Environment Land Water and Planning in May, 2023.

Mr Swart said the new visitor information kiosk would be located on the ground floor of the WPACC, near the theatre stairs between the Ford Street and Ovens Street entrances, and would be open seven days a week.

"It will be a modern, flexible space in the heart of our arts and culture precinct," he said.

He said the WPACC kiosk, and an information centre to be established as part of the Glenrowan Heritage Project when it is completed in April, would be staffed by visitor information centre assistants "offering the same informative and professional service to visitors".

Mr Swart said council was committed to promoting and supporting the growth of the tourism industry – a key driver of the local economy – and that the rural city had a strong tourism brand further enhanced this year by the 'Get away from the everyday' marketing campaign.

He said a visitor servicing strategy was adopted by council last year which provided the plan for council to "reinvigorate and redesign" its visitor services.

"The strategy seeks to support the growth of our tourism industry and maximise benefit to the local economy," he said.

"It recommends ways to better service the arts and cultural precinct of Wangaratta and improve visitor services.

"This redesign of visitor servicing in our municipality, with the relocation of the visitor information centre from a leased building to a modern, central point of attraction, will improve the delivery of visitor information in line with changing visitor demands and the increasing role of technology in tourism."

Mr Swart said customer trends, needs and expectations were constantly changing, and the increasing use of technology as well as the impact of the COVID–19 pandemic meant visitor behaviour and the way information was accessed had "fundamentally changed".

"The tourism industry is adapting to a more contemporary customer service model," he said.

"Walk–in traffic to the visitor information centre has reduced significantly in the past five years.

"The shift to visitors relying on information from online sources has been steadily growing, and while the COVID–19 pandemic exaggerated this, numbers have not returned to pre–pandemic levels."

Mr Swart pointed to a section of the 2021 visitor services strategy revealing the results of a survey of 550 January visitors to the King Valley, which showed that 83 per cent had a preference for accessing tourist information on their smartphones.

Other preferred avenues of information access included word–of–mouth (27 per cent) and tablet/laptop (20 per cent), with only 16 per cent nominating a preference for using a physical visitor information centre.

"Communication via social media, direct mail and other online channels including our websites continues to grow in popularity and reach," Mr Swart said.

"The redesign of Wangaratta's visitor servicing seeks to be more dynamic and agile, and to make use of the emerging trends to grow our tourism industry."

Mr Swart said visitor information assistants currently used technology to guide visitors to the area, and the use of interactive screens would continue in both new locations, along with strategically–located QR codes guiding visitors to real–time information.

"In addition, the Visit brand will continue to be promoted and marketed," he said.