It has taken well over a decade and a change in leadership at Wollongong’s peak tourism body, but the city will again have its main tourist and visitors’ centre “where the people are”, close to the centre of town. The search is now on for the ideal location.

That news will be welcomed by many in the business and tourism sectors who were baffled by the original decision to shut down the centrally located tourist information centre in lower Crown Street, to open one 20 minutes’ drive away, and only accessible by road, at Bulli Tops.

Destination Wollongong’s still relatively new general manager, Jeremy Wilshire, is saying what many have been saying for years: why put your prime tourist information facility so far away from where the tourists coming to Wollongong actually hang out?

Jeremy told The Illawarra Flame while Wollongong foots the bill for operating the Southern Gateway Centre, it appears to be servicing more visitors to Shellharbour, Kiama and the Shoalhaven than Wollongong.

Most Gateway visitors aren’t going to Wollongong

“I think it’s an anomaly that 60 to 70 per cent of visitors (to the Southern Gateway Centre) don’t intend to visit Wollongong,” Jeremy said. “So, as a gateway introduction to the region, it serves a purpose but perhaps at the expense of Wollongong itself.

“So, yes I think we need a visitors’ centre in the city where the tourists congregate, and which showcases our coastal amenity.”

Jeremy said his team would explore location options over the next 12 months, but he put a line through reopening where the former tourist centre operated in Crown Street. He kept his cards close to his chest but hinted a location closer to the beach or the harbour might be preferable.

One option might be to dust off Wollongong Council’s 2007 Blue Mile Vision document, which proposed a site for a visitors’ centre close to the lighthouse and overlooking Wollongong Harbour. While much of that vision has been implemented, there has never been a firm proposal, until now, to open a tourist information centre closer to our city’s tourist hot spots.

Former tourism boss welcomes the news

News of the planned relocation of Wollongong’s tourist centre has been welcomed by the inaugural chair of Tourism Wollongong, Harold Hanson. He has long argued that moving the facility to the top of the escarpment was a huge mistake.

“I tried to get there once and I got lost,” Harold said. “I ended up on the road to Picton.”

“It is just wrong that the third city in the most important state in Australia does not have a tourist office in its CBD.”

Harold said he’d been offered the Bulli Tops site when he was in charge of Tourism Wollongong in the early 1980s. “But I refused it because it wasn’t in the CBD where it needed to be. I was also worried about younger staff, especially females, having to drive home at night on Mount Ousley Road. It was very inappropriate.”

Jeremy Wilshire’s concerns that the Bulli Tops centre was providing more service to neighbouring LGAs than Wollongong itself were borne out during a visit to the facility by The Illawarra Flame.

We spoke to a tour leader, bringing a bus load of 29 visitors from Korea to the South Coast for a day out. They’d stopped at the Southern Gateway Centre for a coffee, ice creams, a toilet break and an opportunity to take photographs with the spectacular view of Wollongong stretching out below. That was as close to visiting Wollongong as they got.

Their destination was to travel south into the Shoalhaven to take a dolphin cruise and visit a winery, before heading back to Sydney. The tour guide said he never took his guests to Wollongong, but the Gateway provided a welcome break on their journey. Not one of his 29 Korean guests set foot in the visitors’ centre.

Pop-up tourist centre in old courthouse

Over the next week, Wollongong is welcoming thousands of visitors for the World Triathlon Championships. Recognising there’s no tourist information readily available near Belmore Basin and the Blue Mile where the majority of visitors will be gathering, Destination Wollongong has opened a Pop Up Visitor Centre in the historic court house opposite Wollongong Harbour.

The pitch from Destination Wollongong is simple. “Need to book a local tour, find some hidden gems, or looking to fill time between events? We’ve got you covered! Come see us at our pop-up Visitor Information Centre, operating 14-19 October 2025, across from Wollongong Harbour at the historic old courthouse."

Over the next six days, the pop-up centre will be open between 9am-4pm Tuesday-Thursday and 9am-5pm Friday-Sunday.

Gateway tourist project always fraught

The Southern Gateway Centre at Bulli Tops has been fraught from the beginning. Original plans put the cost of the facility at $1.5 million. Promised federal funding support failed to eventuate, meaning Council had to fund the gap. The construction was delayed for several years, and when it finally opened in November 2012, the total cost had ballooned to a reported $11 million.

The Illawarra Aboriginal Corporation invested more than $1 million to create the Jumbulla Aboriginal Discovery Centre, but it closed less than 18 months after opening. The entry costs – $15 for adults and $10.50 for children – were blamed for lower than expected visitor numbers to the centre.