Best of Camp New York Awards: How Voting Works & How to Win

Who votes in the Best of Camp New York Awards and why it exists

The Best of Camp New York Awards is a public-vote program built around the people who actually use New York campgrounds: campers themselves. The organizer, the Campground Owners of New York, brands the program as the Camper's Choice Awards by Camp New York, and the framing matters. This is not a panel of judges or an editor's list. The honors go to the independently owned and operated campgrounds that campers across New York name themselves, first through a nomination phase and then through a voting phase.

The association behind it is a statewide body for campground owners. Its address is 60 100 Saratoga Village Blvd, Malta, NY 12020, and it operates the campnewyork.com website where the awards live. Beyond the awards, the association runs member programs that include a mentorship program, a Hall of Fame, member events, and support for Camp Good Days, which gives a sense of an organization rooted in the state's camping community rather than in media publishing.

That community grounding shapes who the ballot is for. A family that summers at an independent campground in the Adirondacks, a weekend camper in the Catskills, and a full-time RVer crossing the state all have a stake in the same ballot, because the program covers the whole state rather than a single city or county. For campground owners, the awards are a chance to be recognized by the guests who know their grounds best.

The program at a glance

The dated record for the Best of Camp New York Awards

The awards are young. The Best of Camp New York Awards debuted in 2025, which the program's own page describes as the first Camper's Choice Awards by Camp New York. A 2026 edition followed, giving the program confirmed editions in 2025 and 2026. Those two years are the whole published history, and they are enough to call the program annual without claiming anything about how long it will run.

The 2026 cycle has a published shape. Nominations run through July, closing July 31, and the voting period runs from August 7 through September 7, 2026. The page repeats the voting dates in its expandable sections, so a camper arriving in late August knows the ballot is still open, while a camper arriving in mid-September knows it has closed. The nomination-to-vote sequence gives campgrounds a full month of July to rally their guests before the voting phase begins.

What the page does not print in advance is the fine print. The awards page does not publish the full category roster, any per-supporter vote limit, or voter eligibility rules; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The same applies to the exact dates of future cycles. The 2025 and 2026 editions both anchored the voting window to late summer, but the association has not committed to those months for 2027 in anything published so far.

For a supporter planning outreach, the practical takeaway is the sequence rather than any single date: nominate in July, vote from early August into early September, and let the live page settle any question about dates or rules.

How a supporter votes in the Best of Camp New York Awards today

The mechanic is deliberately simple because the ballot sits on the association's own website. A supporter visits the awards page at campnewyork.com, expands the section for the phase that is currently open, and follows the form. During July, that means nominating a favorite independently owned New York campground. From August 7 through September 7 in the 2026 cycle, it means voting for the campgrounds that made the ballot.

Because the program runs on the association's site rather than on an outside voting platform, there is no separate app or third-party login standing between a camper and the ballot. Everything a supporter needs, from the phase dates to the form itself, sits on the single awards page. The page's expandable blocks carry the instructions, so the first action for any newcomer is to open the nominations or voting section and read what the current phase asks for.

The page names a Best Overall honor among its award phrases, and the live form is where the complete category list appears for the cycle in progress. A supporter who wants to vote in a specific category should open the ballot during the voting window rather than relying on last year's structure, because the association has not published a standing category roster.

Timing matters more than technique here. A month-long window rewards campgrounds that remind guests steadily from the first week of August, and it forgives a camper who forgets to vote today and returns next weekend. The single most useful habit for a supporter is simply returning to the awards page while the window is open.

How this ballot sits beside its New York neighbours

New York's best-of field is crowded, and the Best of Camp New York Awards occupies a corner of it that none of the city ballots touch. The sibling programs on this site are all publisher-run readers' choice contests tied to places: Best of Brooklyn, Best of Queens, Best of the Bronx, The City's Best, Best of New York City, Best of Hudson Valley, and Best of Westchester. Each of those ballots has its own publisher behind it and its own patch of the state to cover.

This program is different in three ways. First, it is statewide, so a campground near Lake George and a campground in western New York compete on the same ballot, while the sibling contests are bounded by their city or region. Second, it is industry-specific: the nominees are campgrounds, not restaurants or shops, so the audience is campers and campground owners rather than a general local readership. Third, the organizer is a trade association, the Campground Owners of New York, not a media company, and the ballot lives on the association's own domain.

For a campground owner, that means the competition here is other campgrounds, and the supporters who matter are guests. For a camper, it means a vote carries weight across the whole state's independent campground scene. A supporter following several New York ballots at once should keep the calendars separate, because this program's July-to-September rhythm does not match every sibling's schedule.

Strengthening support for a campground on this ballot

A campground that wants to win here is really asking its guests to act, twice, on a schedule the association sets. The nomination phase runs through July, so the first job is making sure loyal campers nominate before that window closes. The second is the voting phase from August 7 through September 7, when the same guests return to the campnewyork.com awards page and vote. A campground that treats those as two separate pushes, with a reminder for each, gives its supporters a clear path.

The organizer's page encourages participation during the voting period but publishes no rules about outside help, purchased support, or automated voting. That silence is not permission. Awards ballots generally treat irregular voting activity as a threat to the entry, and a campground whose vote pattern looks artificial risks the recognition it was chasing. Genuine guest outreach, in person at the site and through the channels campers already follow, is the approach that carries no such risk. For the broader question of what outside help looks like, the votes guide covers the mechanics, and the award-votes page discusses the award-ballot context specifically.