Do you remember the English Pub near the London Bridge in the English Village? Well, it has reopened! It now houses the newly expanded Visitor Information Center. Our visitor center is something for every citizen and elected official to feel very proud of because it offers visitors a truly enhanced experience and now that it has lots more space, visitors can spend more time in the center learning even more about our area.
Jan Kassies is the Director of Visitor Services for the Lake Havasu City Convention & Visitors Bureau and Director of the Visitor Center. Jan and his team of volunteers are an amazing team of happy people who love to talk about our city, our lake and all we have to offer. Jan is not only an idea guy, but also a real doer. When he gets an idea, you can count on it becoming a reality in the near future! Evidence of this is the new, elegantly appointed visitor center that is four times larger and sits right next door to the previous one.
The center has a European flair to its décor, perhaps because Jan is from the Netherlands. People lovingly call him, “The Dutch Dude”. He has implemented many tours,lots of marketing opportunities for localbusinesses, facilitates housing for visitorsthrough electronic advertising and he alsoconducts walking tours daily for visitors. Ifyou need to know something about LakeHavasu City or where to find something, callJan or one of his volunteers.
The volunteers at the visitor center provide thousands of hours of service each year assisting visitors to find local businesses and services. Their contribution to this community is upwards of millions of dollars and they provide these services happily for free. This is indeed a special group of people worthy of recognition for the work that they do, which is to provide visitors with information and assistance for anything from hotel reservations to gas stations to medical information to church services. Imagine going into a city where you have never been and find someone who knows everything about that place and directs you to everything you want to see and do. That’s what the volunteers do.
Jan says there are two priorities for a visitor center… the first is to enhance the visitor’s experience in our area by providing lots of information. The second is to move as many visitors through as many local businesses as possible to leave as many visitor dollars in our community as possible, providing a huge positive economic impact to our city.
The volunteers have a couple of “site inspections” each month, that is when they actually go out to a local business or attraction and see it first-hand, having the ability to ask lots of questions… thereby learn a lot about local businesses and attractions. One of the most beneficial local marketing opportunities for businesses is to provide information to the visitor center staff so they can offer it to the visitors who come here.
Jan and his 22 volunteers served well over 100,000 visitors in 2011 and more than 60,000 so far this year. He says he truly needs more volunteers to work as few or as many hours as they would like. If you are looking for a very rewarding hobby and want to do something that is very important to the community, give Jan a call at 928-855-5655 and ask him for a tour of the visitor center and tell him you would like to volunteer for a couple of hours each month. You will learn so much about your community and meet more interesting people than you ever imagined!
LAKE HAVASU CITY VISITORS CENTER
422 ENGLISH VILLAGE
LAKE HAVASU CITY, AZ
928-855-5655