Hot Springs Feast Month Visitors' Choice Awards: How Voting Works & How to Win

What are the Hot Springs Feast Month Visitors' Choice Awards?

The Feast Month Visitors' Choice Awards are the public vote at the center of Visit Hot Springs' November restaurant promotion. The organizer, the tourism organization that publishes the city's official travel material at hotsprings.org, folds the ballot into a wider celebration of local dining rather than running it as a standalone poll. Supporter picks decide which venues take the titles, and the results feed straight back into the organization's own marketing.

The same domain that carries the ballot sells Hot Springs as "a relaxing spa vacation getaway in the beautiful Ouachita Mountains," so the awards live inside a visitor-facing brand rather than a newsroom one. That placement matters for anyone comparing Arkansas public vote contests: the sponsor is a destination organization with a food-focused, single-city franchise, not an editorial desk picking favorites across a region.

The Feast Month Visitors' Choice Awards are run by Visit Hot Springs, and the ballot sits at hotsprings.org/feastmonth/ on the organizer's own web property.

When has the ballot run, and what dates govern the window?

Visit Hot Springs treats the awards as an annual piece of Feast Month, and the documented run backs that framing: confirmed editions fall in 2021, 2023, 2024 and 2025. The list does not account for every season in between, and the organizer's published material explains none of the gaps, so those four years mark the full extent of what has been published about past editions.

The voting window is anchored to the month itself. In the organizer's words, "Visit Hot Springs will celebrate the amazing variety of food available in the city with Feast Month, happening November 1- 30!" Day-level scheduling inside that span, such as a cut-off hour on the final day, is not stated anywhere beside the ballot. Nothing published describes a separate nomination or entry round ahead of the vote either.

Visit Hot Springs prints no per-person vote limit and no eligibility wording on its Feast Month pages; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

The 2025 winners announcement shows what a finished edition produces:

Beyond the pairings above, the same announcement carries lines for burgers, steak, tacos, a vegetarian cafe and food trucks with no venue attached in the accompanying text.

How does a supporter cast a vote on the Feast Month ballot?

Voting starts at the page titled "Feast Month | Hot Springs National Park Arkansas." During the live window the page presents the food races as best-of lines, and a supporter marks a favorite in each one worth influencing. Because Visit Hot Springs publishes no rules text beside the form, the steps below reflect what the page itself shows rather than any separate instruction sheet.

• Open hotsprings.org/feastmonth/ while the November promotion is running.
• Read through the printed best-of food lines, from barbecue through sweets.
• Mark a preferred venue in each category worth weighing in on.
• Submit the picks on the same page.

Outcomes surface after the count. The organizer announced the 2025 results in a blog post titled "The People Have Spoken and the Results Are In," which preserves the winning pairings for anyone studying prior editions. Recounts, audits and tie-breaker procedures receive no mention on the public pages.

Voting happens entirely on the Feast Month page of hotsprings.org, and results are announced later on the organizer's blog.

Where does this ballot sit among Arkansas public vote contests?

Within this site's Arkansas collection, the Feast Month ballot keeps company with the Arkansas Country Music Awards, the ARKAST Awards, the Ay Restaurant Poll, the Ays Cutest Pet Contest, and two regional newspaper surveys, Best of the Best 2026 from the Russellville courier and Best of the Grand Prairie from the Stuttgart Daily Leader. Each occupies a different slice of the state's public vote scene.

The closest vertical neighbor is the Ay Restaurant Poll, which also ranks food, while the two newspaper surveys cover whole regions with mixed category lineups. The music honors carry the state's name in their titles, and the pet contest serves a different audience altogether. Owner and scope mark the real dividing lines here: a city tourism office rather than a publisher, a single city rather than a circulation area, and a menu-only subject rather than a general readers poll.

A destination marketer as sponsor, a food-only slate and a November calendar are the traits that set the Feast Month ballot apart from its Arkansas neighbors.

How can a favorite venue strengthen its support during Feast Month?

A venue campaign here has one structural advantage: the whole competition fits inside a single calendar month, so momentum from the opening days carries across the entire window. The 2025 announcement, with names from The Pho House to Via Roma Italian, shows that venues can hold their titles; as Solleder put it, "Many of our past winners repeated their victories in the 2024 edition of our annual celebration of Hot Springs' title of favorite city in Arkansas for diverse dining."

Practical levers follow from that shape. Remind diners in house throughout November, put the ballot link on receipts and tables, and ask satisfied visitors for a pick before they leave town. Visit Hot Springs has not published a position on organized outside help, so any paid effort should begin from whatever guidance the organizer offers. General methods are collected in this site's guide to getting more votes online, and the broader service overview sits at buy votes online.