The nomination round is the first phase of Best Of 2024. It takes place February 1-29. This round determines which nominees advance to the voting round in May.

The top 5 nominees from the nomination round will advance to the voting round. The voting round will take place from May 1-31, 2024.

During the nomination period, readers will nominate their favorite people, places, businesses and organizations in various categories. Readers are invited to nominate once per category, per day February 1-29. Eligibility is restricted to locally owned businesses and individuals.

The top 5 nominees (if applicable) in each category will advance as finalists to the voting round in May.

Readers are invited to vote one time per category per email address. This is to maintain the integrity of the readers’ poll and prevent ballot stuffing.

One of the issues we have each year is contacting every business that is nominated. With over 240 nomination categories in 5 counties, thousands of businesses are nominated. This information will allow us to contact those who advance to the voting round.

Absolutely not. Registration is free and the information you provide is only for our internal use. We require registration to help us contact businesses to notify them if they are nominated and if they have won.

There are multiple options to promote your business on the nomination round ballot. Please visit our Promotional Opportunities page for more information.

To promote nominations of your business and social media and beyond, please visit our Toolkit for additional resources.

You may return daily during February to cast nominations. Only one email per user is permitted.

Our publishers reserve the right to eliminate nominations that don’t fully represent the category or the standards of Coastal Style. We also will eliminate businesses that attempt to fraudulently cast nominations or votes. Anyone found to have altered Best Of 2024 graphics, icons or logos will be disqualified. Finally, if a person/business fails to respond to our attempts to contact them for further information concerning their nomination, they may be disqualified.