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Visitor Friendly Award: Sylvan Lake Library recognized for informative initiatives

In a tourism tailored town, being a visitor friendly organization plays a vital role in day to day operations.
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VISITOR FRIENDLY AWARD - Executive Director of the Sylvan Lake Municipal Library accepted the Visitor Friendly Award during the 2016 Sylvan Lake Chamber of Commerce Business Awards held on Friday evening at the Community Centre.

In a tourism tailored town, being a visitor friendly organization plays a vital role in day to day operations.

The Sylvan Lake Municipal Library was recognized during the 2016 Sylvan Lake Chamber of Commerce Business Awards for strides taken by staff to ensure their Establishment is as informative, helpful and accessible as possible to visitors.

For the Library’s Executive Director, Caroline Vandriel having been bestowed the Visitor Friendly Award was an immense honour.

“The big thing has been our placement in town beside the Visitor Information Centre, so whenever they are closed we see significant traffic coming through,” “Visitors will say, ‘We see they’re closed, what can you tell me about this?”

“So front desk staff have gotten very good at giving directions and making suggestions as to where people should eat, that sort of thing.”

In addition, the Library has seen great success with their community bulletin boards, which are free of charge to post on and offer visitors a great place to come in learn more about what’s happening in Sylvan Lake.

An extension of their hours during the summer months to accommodate Friday Farmer’s Markets was another successful initiative in the strive to be as accessible to visitors as possible and saw an increase in traffic in correlation with the decision.

Vandriel explained being a library in a tourism town can vary from other libraries.

“We require more staff in the summer that’s for sure, so it can be a bit tricky at times,” said Vandriel. “But we do the best we can and when some one is coming in from outside Sylvan Lake, we try to be as informative as possible and tell them about how they are able to use library cards from their own towns right here in our library.”

Also nominated for the Visitor Friendly Award was Bayshore Market and Bukwildz.

editor@sylvanlakenews.com