Texas Destination Excellence Awards: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Texas Destination Excellence Awards is and who runs it

The Texas Destination Excellence Awards is a statewide recognition program for the destination marketing side of Texas tourism. It is run by the Texas Association of Convention and Visitor Bureaus, known as TACVB, whose copyright line appears on the ballot site itself. Unlike the city readers' polls that dominate the Texas best-of scene, this ballot is not addressed to the general public: it exists so that convention and visitor bureau staff can recognize peer organizations and their work across the state.

The voting page is titled View & Vote and runs on the organizer's own domain at txdestinationexcellenceawards.org, with the live ballot at the View & Vote address. The ballot organizes entries into the groups visible on the page, Website Design & Effectiveness and Leisure/Tourism Marketing Campaign, each divided by budget tier: under $500,000, $501,000 to $1 Million, and $1 Million & Over for the design group. That structure tells you the nominees are member destinations and their marketing output, judged against organizations of comparable budget rather than against the whole membership at once.

Because the program serves DMO and CVB professionals rather than consumers, the audience is the statewide TACVB membership, not a single city's readership. That shapes everything else on the page: the voters are member staff, the entries are destinations and campaigns, and the awards celebrate the business of promoting Texas destinations. The essentials are gathered in the table below.

The dated evidence: which editions ran and what is not published

This program's confirmed editions ran in 2020, 2024 and 2025. The 2025 evidence is the strongest: the organizer's own View & Vote page carried a live ballot for that round and later stated that voting for the 2025 Texas Destination Excellence Awards had closed, with winners to be announced. That closed notice is what anchors the most recent confirmed cycle.

The 2026 cycle is already visible on the nomination side. The program page on destinationstexas.org stated that Destination Excellence Award nominations had closed for 2026, which means the organizer opened and closed a nomination phase for that year. Whether the 2026 voting round follows, and on what dates, is the open question for the current cycle.

Between the confirmed years there is a silence worth naming honestly. No page states what happened between 2020 and 2024, so the program's shape across those intervening years is simply not documented on the ballot site. The organizer has also not printed the dates the next voting round opens and closes on the View & Vote page; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

What the evidence supports is recurrence rather than a one-off. Three confirmed years across 2020 to 2025, a nomination phase already run for 2026, and a closed notice pointing to a winners announcement together describe a program the TACVB operates as a repeating part of its calendar, even though the ballot page itself stays quiet about dates until a round is underway.

How a supporter votes on the View & Vote ballot

The mechanic on this ballot is narrow by design. The organizer's stated rule is that only DMO and CVB staff are allowed to vote, and only via their official TACVB membership email, traditionally a work address. On top of that, a single vote per email address will be counted. So the literal act of voting is: open the View & Vote page during an open round, expand a category group, choose the budget tier, select the entry, and submit from the membership email.

The page structure supports that sequence. The View & Vote page presents the category groups as expandable sections, with Website Design & Effectiveness and Leisure/Tourism Marketing Campaign each branching into budget tiers such as under $500,000 and $501,000 to $1 Million. A member staff voter moves down that structure to the entry they want to recognize. There is no public ballot behind it: a visitor without a TACVB membership email has no eligible way to log a vote.

Timing is the part the page does not carry forward. The 2025 round is closed, the 2026 nomination phase has closed, and the ballot page prints no dates for the next voting window. A member staffer who wants to participate in the next round should watch the organizer's site and the TACVB membership channels, because the View & Vote page itself announces a round only once it is live or already finished.

How this ballot sits beside its Texas neighbours

The Texas best-of landscape on this site is dominated by city readers' polls, and the contrast with this program is the fastest way to understand it. The Best of Austin Readers Poll, Best of Dallas Readers' Choice, Best of Houston, Best of San Antonio, Best of El Paso and Best of Fort Worth all ask consumers to vote for local businesses inside a single metro. The Texas Destination Excellence Awards asks member staff to judge destinations statewide.

Three differences follow from that. First, the electorate: a city poll is open to anyone who visits, while this ballot counts only TACVB membership emails. Second, the nominees: readers' polls list restaurants, shops and services, while this ballot lists destination marketing organizations and their campaigns, sorted by budget tier. Third, the geography: the readers' polls each cover one city, while this program covers the entire state under a single organizer.

For a supporter, that means the advice that works on a readers' poll does not transfer. Mobilizing customers, posting vote links on social media, and running a public push all assume an open electorate. Here the reachable voters are the member colleagues who already hold a TACVB email, which is why peer communication inside the membership is the only channel that touches this ballot at all.

Strengthening support in a closed membership ballot

Support in this program looks different from support in a consumer poll, and it is worth saying plainly why. With one vote per TACVB membership email and eligibility limited to DMO and CVB staff, there is no public volume to build. The practical route runs inside the membership: make sure member organizations know your entry exists, understand which budget tier it sits in, and remember to cast their single vote before the round closes. A campaign that wins here is one that was visible to its peers early, not one that spiked late. General tactics for public ballots are covered on our votes guide, and award-specific context is on our award votes page, but both describe open electorates; on this TACVB ballot the membership email is the only door, and the organizer's one-vote-per-address rule is the ceiling that applies to every entrant equally.