CANTON – The fourth annual St. Lawrence County Tourism Awards dinner will kick off the summer tourism season, celebrating the growing industry, while recognizing two awardees at the Wednesday, May 25 event, held this year at Pickens Hall in Heuvelton.

The ‘Best Destination Marketing Initiative’ will be presented to Traditional Arts in Upstate New York (TAUNY) this year. This award recognizes the effort to implement an outstanding tourism marketing initiative raising awareness and attracting visitors to St. Lawrence County.

The ‘Best to the Guest’ Tourism Excellence award will be presented to the North Country Children’s Museum. The award recognizes a business or organization who shows ‘commitment to an excellent guest experience, customer service, unique offerings, and attention to detail, which brings pride to St. Lawrence County’. The award is chosen based on nominations and reviews from facebook, tripadvisor, google and yelp.

The Tourism Awards dinner is open to community leaders and tourism industry partners, businesses and interested parties. Data on lodging trends and mobile visitor activity in addition to opportunities to promote tourism in partnership with the St. Lawrence County Chamber and I LOVE NY will be shared.

Everyone is invited to bring their brochures, rack cards and information to a brochure swap set up at the event. Tours of Pickens Hall will start at 4:30 p.m., happy hour with live music by Jamie Savage at 5 p.m. followed by dinner catered by PCP BBQ Catering, then presentations and awards at 6 p.m.

Reservations can be made by calling the St. Lawrence County Chamber of Commerce at 315-386-4000, or by going online to www.SLCchamber.org. The cost for the event is $38 per person.