In May, Discover Newport will be opening what is known as a pop-up visitor center, which shows its optimism that the local tourism industry will recover this summer and fall. This is the prelude to a more robust recovery from a global pandemic next year a year ago.

That is the view of Evan Smith, Executive Director of Discover Newport, who redefined himself during the pandemic, much like similar agencies around the world. It also comes at a time when the tourism industry ravaged by the pandemic sees cause for hope.

“The past 12 months have been excruciating,” said Smith. “We are happy that we have a better new day ahead of us.”

That won’t happen until the third and fourth quarters of this year – summer through fall – and brings innovations with it that are not shared by all tourism agencies across the country. Unlike 40 percent of tourism agencies who don’t run visitor centers, Smith said that Discover Newport will be reopening a visitor center, at least experimentally, albeit greatly reduced from what was housed at the Gateway Center for 32 years.

The new center, Smith said, will open in the 750-square-foot former L’OCCITANE in Long Wharf Mall, not far from the Discover Newport marketing and sales office, also in Long Wharf. In May, he said, it is open four days a week, in June five days a week, and in July and August seven days a week. He said one person will occupy the center when it is open. Discover Newport has signed an eight month lease and will evaluate the center’s success by the end of the year.

The opening of the “pop-up” center means hiring four part-time workers, Smith said. He said Discover Newport first reached out to employees who were made redundant when the Gateway Visitor Center closed, realizing that some former employees had moved on and others decided to retire. He said four former employees applied.

Unlike its previous visitor center at the Gateway Center – now the Gateway Transportation Center – it will not sell ticket sales but rather disseminate visitor information about activities and services in the nine cities in Newport and Bristol Counties, Smith said. “The role of the visitor center is changing,” said Smith. “Even so, some people would prefer to talk to people rather than a computer.”

Discover Newport first designed the Gateway Visitors Center in 1985, when cell phones became available, and eight years before the Internet became public domain. The center opened in 1988 and stayed there for 32 years.

In the meantime, the towns of Newport and Save the Bay are in negotiations to potentially move Easton’s Beach Aquarium from Save the Bay to the center. The Gateway Transportation Center continues to be a transportation hub and offers RIPTA and tour vehicle operations.

Trips to Newport and much of Rhode Island will be a little different this year. International trips, which accounted for 18 percent of Newport tourism, are “gone,” Smith said. There will be no cruise ships, no tour buses. Cruises, he suspects, could return the following year.

But there will be events – Governor McKee just announced that he is working with the Newport Folk and Jazz Festivals to come up with a plan for events that will have a huge economic impact not just on Newport and the state. The Newport Music Festival – the third major Newport music festival – has already announced that it will hold its three-week event in July with 17 concerts, less than half of what it normally does and everything outside of it. Other events across the state have announced that they will be held with configurations that are compliant with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) regulations.

The first of those events in Newport, Smith said, is the Back in Bloom festival at Newport’s Rosecliff mansion, June 18-20.

Destinations like Newport, Block Island and Rhode Island’s South County will “do well” this year as travelers seek escape from metropolitan areas “to find safety and solitude,” Smith said. These travelers come mainly by car from the Northeast, mostly from Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey.

Discover Newport remains an important part of the tourism industry in the area. It sees its main task as a sales and marketing organization to compete with hundreds of travel destinations around the world and to operate its visitor center on a secondary basis.

“There were times,” said Smith, “when I felt we weren’t going to make it.” But now the dark clouds are behind us. Lots of things to feel good about. Forward and upward. “

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