Two Boothbay region businesses received high praise from voters in Down East magazine’s Best of Maine issue, July 2017, now on newsstands.

Down East magazine readers voted Spruce Point Inn the Best Hotel/Resort in Maine for the second year in a row, and The Coal Shack, a vacation rental home on TurnKey Vacation Rentals, was just recently named the Best Vacation Rental in Maine by the magazine.

The Readers’ Choice nominees are identified and voted on by thousands of Down East readers each year. Individual categories include Travel & Play, Food & Drink, Arts & Media, and Shopping & Self. This year’s winning tallies were closer than ever.

“We spend all year thinking about the Best of Maine contest and countless hours tabulating readers’ votes,” said Down East Editor in Chief Kathleen Fleury. “The July issue is our annual list of Maine’s ‘best everything.’”

Spruce Point Inn (SprucePointInn.com) is located on 56 waterfront acres in Boothbay and provides hospitality to visitors and locals, with a range of accommodations, three restaurants and a full service spa.  The Inn is a perennial TripAdvisor “Award of Excellence winner; and  Conde Nast Traveler magazine readers also have selected Spruce Point as one of the top 20 Resort in the Northeast, one of the Top 20 Resorts in the U.S. for Family Reunions and one of the Top 10 Boutique Resort Spas in the U.S.

“We are so honored that the people who know Maine perhaps better than anyone else — the readers of Down East, including Spruce Point Inn guests — have named Spruce Point Inn the best hotel in the entire state, “said Angelo Digiulian, innkeeper with Joe Paolillo at Spruce Point Inn. “Spruce Point enjoys extraordinary loyalty — 60 percent repeat business — because the guest experience and choice of accommodations we offer at Spruce Point Inn are truly something special. Honors such as the Down East ‘Best Hotel’ make us work even harder to sustain and exceed guest expectations.”

One of TurnKey’s first homes, The Coal Shack, a harborfront studio in downtown Boothbay Harbor, is newly renovated, welcomes pets, and is walking distance to shops, restaurants and excursions.

“Don and Liana, owners of The Coal Shack, exemplify TurnKey owners who are dedicated to providing the best guest experience,” says Jason Schlosser, general manager of TurnKey Maine. “Our success this past year is a direct result of working with homeowners who use TurnKey technologies and onsite services to make renting a vacation rental home easy, convenient and enjoyable for travelers.”

Since opening a local office a year ago, TurnKey has added five full-time employees and now represents nearly 60 vacation rental homes in Maine. To celebrate its one-year anniversary, TurnKey chartered two boats during the Windjammer Days Festival and hosted nearly 60 vacation home owners and TurnKey employees.