Destination 318 People's Choice Award: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Destination 318 People's Choice Award is and who runs it

The Destination 318 People's Choice Award is a community award decided by open public voting, with Visit Shreveport-Bossier as the organizing body behind it. Visit Shreveport-Bossier is the destination organization serving the Shreveport-Bossier market in Louisiana. This is not a media readers' poll: the ballot is hosted on Visit Shreveport-Bossier's own domain, at visitshreveportbossier.org/destination-318/, and no outside balloting service sits between the voter and the form. The program sits inside Destination 318, the organization's visitor-focused development initiative, and runs alongside the $100K Tourism Challenge, a grant effort the same office describes as designed to boost tourism in the market.

What supporters vote on is stated in the page's own words: innovative concepts, grant winners, community ideas and visitor-focused development projects. That gives the ballot a community-development character that separates it from the retail and dining categories typical of Louisiana best-of polls. The vertical here is best-of, but the subject matter is tourism and civic projects rather than favorite businesses.

The organizer is reachable directly. Questions go to Karen M. Barnes at [email protected], and the office address is 0 Marshall Street, Suite 120, Shreveport, LA 71101. The site footer credits Visit Shreveport-Bossier as publisher, so the program, the hosting site and the organizing body are all the same organization.

Confirmed editions and the 2026 dates for the Destination 318 ballot

Five editions of the Destination 318 People's Choice Award are confirmed: 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026, all anchored to the organizer's winners listing at visitshreveportbossier.org. Those five years make this an annual program with a five-year run, and a sixth edition would be expected in 2027.

The 2026 cycle carries two dated facts. The People's Choice Awards page lists the voting period as running through May 20 at 11:45 PM. The main Destination 318 page then carries a June 2026 results phase, dated June 1 through June 30, 2026, with winners announced at 3:00 PM on June 4, 2026, at Bonvenu Bank. So the sequence in 2026 is a spring voting close followed by an early June announcement.

What Visit Shreveport-Bossier has not published for this ballot is the list of categories supporters vote across, any limit on the number of ballots one supporter may submit, and the eligibility rules for nominees; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. A day-level opening date for the voting period is also absent from the printed dates. The live ballot page is where those details must be checked, and it changes with each edition.

One caution on reading the dates: the June 1 to June 30 window on the Destination 318 page is described there as a results phase, not as the People's Choice voting window itself. The May 20 close is the date the People's Choice Awards page prints for voting.

How a supporter votes in the Destination 318 People's Choice Award today

Supporters cast straightforward public votes on Visit Shreveport-Bossier's website. A supporter opens visitshreveportbossier.org/destination-318/, reviews the concepts and projects listed, and backs the ones they want to see win. The page invites visitors to vote for innovative concepts, discover grant winners and support community ideas plus visitor-focused development projects, so the same visit covers both the People's Choice side and the Tourism Challenge grant side of the program.

No third-party balloting service is involved. The vote happens on visitshreveportbossier.org itself, which means the organizer controls the form, the timing and any limits directly. The page does ask that visitors use Chrome, Firefox, Edge or Safari, since the site does not support every browser.

For the Destination 318 award, the ballot page prints no account requirement, no daily-vote rule and no category roster. If the live form asks for an email or limits repeat voting, that behavior appears on the form itself during the cycle. The organizer's contact for questions is Karen M. Barnes at [email protected], which is the direct route for anything the page leaves unstated.

Because the ballot is hosted under the visitshreveportbossier.org domain, supporters who find it through search should check the address before voting: the genuine page is under visitshreveportbossier.org, and the People's Choice Awards detail page lives under the same domain's partners path.

How the Destination 318 ballot sits beside its Louisiana neighbours

Louisiana has a busy best-of ballot scene, and this program is one of six confirmed public-vote programs in the state on this site. The neighbours are the Alexandria Community's Choice Awards, the Bayou's Best Community's Choice Awards in Houma, Best of Baton Rouge, Best of SWLA, the Best of New Orleans run by Gambit, and Best of 225 from Louisiana 225 magazine.

What makes the Destination 318 People's Choice Award different is its publisher and its subject. The others are community or media readers' polls covering businesses and services across their own markets. This one is run by a destination organization, and its ballot is about tourism development: grant concepts, community ideas and visitor-focused projects under the $100K Tourism Challenge umbrella.

Among the six, this is the sole ballot hosted entirely on the organizer's own website rather than a dedicated balloting platform, which keeps the voting experience inside Visit Shreveport-Bossier's site. For supporters comparing Louisiana ballots, the practical difference is subject matter: a vote here backs a development idea for Shreveport-Bossier, not a favorite local business.

Building support for a Destination 318 People's Choice nominee

Because this ballot is a public vote on Visit Shreveport-Bossier's own site, support comes down to reaching people who care about the Shreveport-Bossier community and its visitor economy. A nominee's most reliable moves are straightforward: ask the people who already back the project, share the ballot link before the May 20 close, and remind supporters that the announcement follows on June 4, 2026.

Visit Shreveport-Bossier publishes no rule text for this ballot on outside help, purchased votes or campaign tactics, so a supporter planning a push has no printed rule to lean on either way. The reasonable reading is that Visit Shreveport-Bossier expects genuine public participation, and the live form is where any enforcement would happen. Our votes guide covers outreach methods that work on community ballots, and our legality page sets out the general position on paid support before anyone spends money.

Timing matters more here than on year-round polls: the 2026 voting period closes May 20 at 11:45 PM, so outreach packed into the final days has less room than outreach spread across the open window.