The annual USA TODAY 10Best Readers Choice Awards are upon us once again, and for the third consecutive year, I – on behalf of Escape Authority, and more importantly on behalf of you, our readers – was selected as one of the few industry experts to nominate the best of the best. I’d like to take a moment to address why we’ve opted to decline participation this year.

This is not a decision we came to lightly – and although it was my name that received the invitation, it’s something we as a site discussed together to determine what was best. On the one hand, it’s heart-breaking to not be able to give our support to the venues out there who deserve it – venues who just being nominated can quite literally be “put on the map” to a world-wide eye. Venues who not only deserve, but have well-earned the accolade.

Unfortunately, on the other side of that coin is our opinion that each prior 10Best Escape Room Award list has been terribly imbalanced. Venues that very few might suggest even deserve a spot in the conversation sweep the results in what, in our opinion, appears to be not a contest of actual quality but rather one of who pays the most in marketing.

In our conversations with USA TODAY on this matter, they assured us that they monitor votes closely and eliminate those that come from scam sites and other pay for vote services. They also stressed that they’ve actually disqualified rooms in the past for these practices. We certainly appreciate all of this, but at the end of the day, while we genuinely believe USA TODAY is doing the very best that they can, there’s only so much that can be done to stop potential cheating and/or incentivized voting from occurring in a contest like this. In our opinion, the results of 2018 speak volumes to that possibility.

That not withstanding, we of course thank USA TODAY for their warm invitation to participate three years in a row. We encourage you, our readers, to support your favorite venues – and we genuinely congratulate all those deserving of being involved.

USA TODAY’s 10Best Escape Room award is open for voting until Monday, August 26, 2019 at noon EST.