The Vicksburg Convention and Visitors Bureau is working on new ways to get information to people in the digital age.

At Thursday’s monthly meeting there were not enough members to hold an official meeting, but board member Bess Averett did announce monthly literature put out by the VCVB staff will have a slight change moving forward.

“We have decided per some of the staff response that we are going to make the arts and entertainment calendar available via QR code on the existing calendar versus printing that separate calendar every month,” Averatt said.

The VCVB staff produces three pieces of literature monthly for visitors. Those pieces are an arts and entertainment guide, an event calendar and a newsletter. The staff noticed visitors were not picking up the trifold arts and entertainment guide and many of the brochures were coming back to the office at the end of the month. They have chosen to stop producing the guide.

“We’re just suspending the production of a collateral piece that is non-effective,” VCVB executive director Bill Seratt said.

Since they are not printing this guide anymore they have decided to make the information available on the existing monthly event calendar. The solution will be to add a QR code to the events calendar so visitors can scan the code on their smartphone and get the arts and entertainment guide straight to their handheld device. Seratt said the code will take visitors directly to visitvicksburg.com and the live music tab on the website.

“It just makes sense,” VCVB board president Lori Burke said. “Everything else is digital and electronic now.”

Just by not printing the extra arts and entertainment guide every month, the VCVB will save around $20,000 a year, which will be put back in the advertising budget.

“It will be a savings to the VCVB of roughly $20,000 a year that we’ll be able to roll into better outside advertising for those concerts and live entertainment,” Averett said.

The marketing committee of the VCVB came up with this solution when they met earlier to discuss ways of being more efficient in getting information out to visitors.

“We met and looked at expenses, effectiveness and ways to utilize visual media better,” Averett said.

She said the new code will be more user friendly for guests.

“It’s just a constant effort to reevaluate what we’re doing, and [question] are we making the best use of our marketing dollars? [We] decided there is a better way to present this information that’s more user friendly to the visitor and it’s a savings to us,” Averett said.

Seratt and Averett said they already have the ability to access the code and said it is a very easy process to go online and set it up.