Prospective visitors don’t seek out information in the way they did 20 years ago.

The Warren County Visitors Bureau is adapting to that reality.

Physical visitor guides continue to be in demand. Executive Director Dave Sherman told the board Thursday that 40,000 were printed for 2020-2021 and just 350 remain.

“(It’s) pretty cool to see all those go out the door,” Sherman said.

They’re approaching the finish line on the next round of visitors guides and Sherman said many of them are spoken for. Getaways on Display, an entity that stocks brochures at travel centers, has requested 25,000 of the 35,000 that will be printed.

Kinzua Bridge State Park asked for 35 boxes, as well, meaning that 78 percent of the total are allocated in just those two requests.

Efforts are also in the works to enhance that promotion effort in digital spaces.

For one, they aim to get the visitor’s guide online but the most potentially transformative is the Maps Technology program that the board agreed to move ahead with last year.

Visitors or people looking at some information about the county could use their smartphones to scan a QR code.

They get information. They also provide information — possibly by filling out a contactless form that the code could direct them to. The information they provide is available to the Visitors Bureau.

Sherman told the board Thursday that as they understand the system more fully it’s clear that it’s “starting to be a positive.”

“What it will allow us (is to) further concentrate our marketing efforts,” he said. “We have a good idea where folks are coming from. This will take most of the guesswork out of it.”

“This is the next generation,” Board member Troy Clawson said.

He talked about how this will give them the opportunity to identify exactly the ad reach for a promotion along with “whatever they want to give us” from a demographics perspective.

He called it an “unbelievable new way to do business; another tool in the toolkit to do our job better.”

The WCVB has also rolled out a blog on their website, wcvb.net, that is seeing substantial month-over-month growth.