ASHTABULA —
With a little cooperation from the hardware supplier, several information kiosks should be in place at Ashtabula County tourism hot spots by mid-summer.
Scott Becker, president of the Civic Development Corporation, and Ken Johnson, general manager of Conneaut Telephone Co., are demonstrating a prototype of the kiosk and its content, which was developed by Conneaut Telephone for CDC. The kiosk provides an electronic gateway for information about the county, which draws on the Ashtabula County Convention and Visitors Bureau database.
The target audience is for tourists who are already in the county and want to find places to eat, stay or be entertained. They can learn about the county’s 18 covered bridges, 20 wineries, two state parks, numerous museums and other attractions by tapping the appropriate icons on the 22-inch touch-screen display.
The kiosk project is part of a five-year $700,000 CDC com-
mitment to enhance economic development through tourism, Becker said. Mark Winchell, Visitors Bureau executive director, said the kiosks ultimately will mean more tourism dollars will be spent in the county.
“This is a tool that gets the money out of people’s pockets once they get here,” he said. “This is a tool that really legitimizes the tourism product and gets those last dollars from (tourists) before they leave here.”
Initially, the kiosks will be placed at Ashtabula Towne Square, the Lodge at Geneva-on-the-Lake, SPIRE Institute, an Ashtabula Harbor location, the Ohio Department of Transportation visitor center on Interstate 90 (Conneaut) and the Smolen-Gulf Covered Bridge overlook.
“There will be a few mobile units that can be taken to festivals, such as Wine and Walleye,” Becker said. “You have a lot of visitors in town, and they might say, ‘What else is there to do?’”
Johnson said the kiosk display is not meant to replace the Visitors Bureau’s website or mirror the information there.
“We’re not talking about (reaching) people who are sitting at home on their (computer), planning a trip,” Johnson said.
While making use of Internet connections for updating and linking to the websites of businesses that pay for that option, the kiosk’s content is contained on an internal hard drive, which will be updated daily. Becker said the plan is to delegate the daily administration and updating tasks to the Visitors Bureau once all the bugs are worked out of the system.
Johnson said the kiosks will come in several configurations, depending upon the venue. The mobile unit will be on a pedestal; others may be mounted on the wall or a desk. There is no audio in the content so they won’t interfere with the venue’s ambiance.
The plan was to have the kiosks in place by Memorial Day, but hardware delivery delays have pushed implementation to July 4.
Johnson said one of the biggest challenges of the project has been to sort out and categorize the myriad things that a tourist can do in Ohio’s largest county. He compared the site to an ice field, where there many peaks sticking out of the water but under the surface they are interconnected.
Becker said CDC has been demonstrating the kiosk around the county and receiving feedback from various audiences.
“I think we’re going to do a little bit more of that. Once we get it out there, we’ll get a tremendous amount of feedback on how we can make it better,” Becker said.
