That’s a wrap! Ballots for Idaho’s Best Awards of 2021 are in, and it looks to be a phenomenal success.

The businesses and attractions that were up for voting in their respective categories were nominated by Idaho residents in October. Those that received enough nominations to land in the top 10 earned their spots on the ballot.

Tens of thousands of votes were cast to show support for your favorite businesses and attractions in our community. We were overwhelmed with the enthusiastic response and can’t wait to share the finalists of each category.

Finalists will be announced after the holidays (ETA first week of January).

What Happens Now

We want the Idaho’s Best Awards to be as fair as possible, so our team is working hard to calculate the results and verify the findings. We use a combination of votes and reviews from Google to determine the winners — we even include ratings from the Better Business Bureau in our scoring!

Count Ballots

Who had the most votes? While technology makes counting easy, we still need to verify the results. Other contests permit spamming or daily voting. Idaho’s Best takes pride in our secure voting system to protect the integrity of your vote.

Count Reviews

Idaho’s Best isn’t like most “Best of” contests, which simply count votes. We realize that the community has already been showing their support for the “best” by leaving reviews all year long, so we’re going to count those too! We’re counting every 5-star review published on Google within the last 12 months.

Calculate Rating

While votes and reviews signify great work in the last year, overall ratings tell us how nominees have done long term. The mean rating from Google will be used in conjunction with 5-star reviews and votes to determine the winners.

Announce Finalists

The top 3 of each category will be publicly announced next month once we’ve verified our results. Finalists will also be notified by email as soon as possible.

Announce Winners

Typically, we announce the winners at our smashing Idaho’s Best Awards Banquet, but 2020 has been anything but typical. Like most of you, we’ve had to make some adjustments. But we’re still doing everything we can to have our event while complying with local health and safety regulations. We’ll announce our decision as soon as we can.

If the party is on, finalists will be invited to purchase tickets for the celebration. The banquet includes a red carpet entrance, a fancy dinner, photos, and other special prizes and opportunities.

If the party is not on, we’ll promptly be making other arrangements to announce the winners with as much pizazz as we are able!

Thank You

We’re grateful to everyone for the support and participation in the Idaho’s Best Awards. It’s been a lot of fun, and we’re already looking forward to next year’s contest!