Counting commences as Best of Durban voting closes

VOTING for the 2024 Best of Durban Readers’ Choice awards has officially closed, and our team has begun the enormous task of tallying the votes.

It’s a mammoth task because of the sheer volume of votes cast. What’s more, it’s a nail-biting exercise because everyone is eager to know who the winners are.

With our hearts pumping with pride, our first announcement is, “You did it, Durban! You reached the 429 503 mark! That’s over 429 000 votes cast in the 2024 Best of Durban Readers’ Choice Awards.”

That’s close to double the number of votes cast in 2023 when we had a total of 262 213.

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So it’s pedal to the metal as we continue counting. So far, we have unearthed some interesting insights.

While crunching the numbers, we discovered that Food and Drink was at the top of our voters’ minds.

By Monday, June 3, the Food and Drink category had garnered the lion’s share of your votes, reeling in 76 096 votes.

Close behind the Food and Drink category is the Shopping category with 68 753 votes.

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Next up is the Professional Service category where you made your wishes known, and we counted 68 663 of your votes.

Next, we go through all these thousands of votes to uncover who will be crowned the Best of the Best in Durban.

While many businesses are ecstatic to have been nominated and made it into the voting stage, we are, however, still inundated with business owners who are concerned as to why they were not on the nomination lists.

‘‘Some businesses don’t realise that at Caxton Durban, we don’t choose the nominees. It’s the public, our readers, who nominate and select the winners. That’s why it’s called the Readers’ Choice Awards.

‘‘Our newspapers, websites and social media pages are just the platforms that make it all happen,’’ said Nicole Bérichon, business manager – Caxton Durban.

If you receive the Highway Mail, Northglen News, Berea Mail or Queensburgh News, then you’d better listen out for our distribution crew when they pop your weekly paper into your postbox – a paper that will keep you updated on the much-anticipated winners’ announcement.

Or you can follow our social media pages on Facebook, X, Instagram or WhatsApp for news on the winners.

Winners will be announced on Monday, July 22, 2024, on our website: bestofdurban.co.za, and the Highway Mail, Northglen News, Berea Mail and Queensburgh News newspapers.

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