New England Travel Awards (Boston Magazine): How Voting Works & How to Win

The publisher behind these travel picks calls Boston home

Boston Magazine puts its name behind the New England Travel Awards, asking readers throughout the region to put forward the resorts, festivals, and attractions they'd send a friend to first. The whole operation runs online at bostonmagazine.com, published out of the company's Boston, Massachusetts base.

Everything in that table came straight off the confirmed page. What it leaves out matters just as much: no per-voter cap, no fixed date for when nominations first opened, and nothing about how the awards get organized across a New England-wide territory that stretches well beyond Boston itself. Confirm on the live ballot each cycle for whichever of those a reader actually needs answered.

Under one roof with Best of Boston, but not the same contest

The travel awards aren't Boston Magazine's only readers'-choice property. The same publisher also produces Best of Boston (Boston Magazine), an entirely different ballot built around the city's restaurants, shops, and local services rather than regional travel. Sharing a publisher is where the overlap stops.

A nomination filed for one program has no bearing on the other; Boston Magazine keeps separate submission forms, separate judging, and separate result pages for each. A reader curious which ballot fits a specific nomination should check the subject matter first: restaurants and local services point toward Best of Boston, while resorts, festivals, and regional attractions point toward the travel awards instead.

One firm date on a page that otherwise says little

Only one hard, unambiguous deadline appears on the live page right now: voting wraps Friday, June 5. A results feature is set for Boston Magazine's October 2026 issue, giving readers a second date to watch for even without any promise of an earlier online announcement.

Everything before that closing date stays vague. The page doesn't state when nominations first opened this cycle, doesn't break entries into named categories, and doesn't say whether a voter can submit more than once. A New England destination weighing whether a nomination push is worth the effort is working from two confirmed dates and not much else.

Two rounds back the program overall, 2025 and 2026, so there isn't yet a long stretch of past winners to draw comparisons from either. Category structure, a voting limit, and any per-market detail for the awards' region-wide reach all fall under the same rule: confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

A region-wide ballot, run from a single Massachusetts office

The travel awards invite nominations from across the wider New England region even though the operation itself sits squarely in Massachusetts. Nothing published breaks results down by state or singles out Massachusetts destinations for separate treatment; a resort anywhere in the region competes on the same page as one just outside Boston.

That regional framing is part of what makes the awards worth entering for a business outside Massachusetts too. Proximity to Boston Magazine's home office plays no stated role in how nominations get judged, at least based on anything the confirmed page actually says. Whatever weighting exists between destinations spread across the wider region, it isn't spelled out anywhere on that same page either.

Working the calendar backward from June 5

With a firm closing date already known and no published opening date behind it, the sensible approach is treating whatever window is currently live as the only one that matters, rather than betting on a repeat of an earlier year's schedule. Real supporters contacted early, and reminded again before June 5, accomplish more than a single message sent at the last minute.

A nomination is a starting point, not a guarantee; Boston Magazine alone decides how its own count turns out, and the confirmed page stops at the June 5 closing date without saying anything about what happens between then and the October announcement. Is buying votes legal walks through where a supportive campaign stays within bounds and where it doesn't, worth a read before committing real effort to a New England Travel Awards push. Buying votes online covers how outside help for a nominate-then-vote program is generally organized, and award-vote campaign planning was put together with a regional readers'-choice format exactly like this one in mind.