Over the past several years we’ve witnessed a growing trend where destinations eagerly associate themselves with prestigious gourmet guides like Michelin, Gault & Millau, or other high-end dining companies such as Relais & Chateaux, hoping that an affiliation with gourmet players like these will bring an endless parade of well-to-do travelers willing to spend with abandon in that destination as their next holiday choice. Apart from being exceedingly difficult to measure visitor arrivals because of a guidebook, the truth is that these destinations are, wittingly or unwittingly, alienating themselves from the vast majority of visitors who might otherwise want to visit. Let us explain.
In the past 7 years, Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea all signed up with Michelin to produce restaurant guides for their areas. While fees varied, the average cost was around US$1.5 million per destination, per year. Detailed information about the results is hard to come by, although Arnaud Dunand-Sauthier, chef-owner of the Michelin two-star Le Normandie at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Bangkok, claims a 15% increase in bookings since his restaurant appeared in the Michelin Thailand guide. There are not many seats in a two-star Michelin restaurant, so we question the economic impact on Thailand overall. In fact, we would like to see verifiable evidence of the economic impact for all destinations that bought their way into the guide. Each of these Asian destinations is already known for excellent cuisine but perhaps destination marketers felt that more work needed to be done.
It is true that the Michelin name is synonymous with gourmet. Yet when Michelin uses its name with its other products, it starts confusing consumers and diluting its strong gourmet brand. For example, Michelin produces a Bib Gourmand award for “good quality, good-value cooking.” However, currently, Michelin lists only 3,414 such restaurants in the world. It is impossible to review anonymously, rate and rank every restaurant that is at least “good” around the world. And why try? Five past editions of our Association’s Food Travel Monitor reports proved that food-loving travelers do much more than eat in restaurants when they travel. Their Bib Gourmand program seems like a solution looking for a problem.
Having a gourmet focus is usually short-sighted for destination marketers and we will explain why. We have seen evidence on several occasions of a country’s culinary marketing manager reflecting his or her own personal preference for gourmet experiences in the national gastronomy tourism strategy. For two nations in particular where this happened, most people would not think of either as “gourmet,” even today, years after their gourmet marketing efforts began.
Indeed, a gourmet preference in dining is consistently towards the bottom of the list in PsychoCulinary profiling research performed by the World Food Travel Association. It started off in 2010 in 9th place with only 10% of those surveyed showing a primary preference for gourmet. In our latest Food Travel Monitor research from 2020, that had worked its way up to only 8th place (out of 13) and 18% of respondents. Yet respondents can have up to three major PsychoCulinary profiles. Other profile types might be authentic, innovative, budget, social, vegetarian, etc. This means that even for the people who chose gourmet as their first PsychoCulinary profile, it could be followed closely by other often contradictory profiles (such as authentic or budget). People who love gourmet food are not always looking for gourmet food. We may be very happy with a traditional English breakfast in London, or a meal from a hawker stand in Singapore. And perhaps one night on our holiday, we may seek a gourmet dining experience. That behavior does not necessarily make someone a gourmet traveler. And crafting a destination’s entire promotional strategy around such an assumption is a mistake. The percentage of travelers who are truly 100% gourmet — who seek the finest dining experiences at every meal during their vacation — is always in the minority.
Other destinations like the country of Latvia also jumped on the Michelin bandwagon, paying €150,000 for a three-year contract to “analyze Latvia’s gourmet potential.” Perhaps this was due to a little bit of Baltic competition after Estonia announced its own Michelin guide featuring 31 eateries, only two of which have Michelin stars. Apparently, the “big benefit for Latvia is the international reputation and dissemination of information to the audience, which follows Michelin. We see this as an advertising campaign for Latvia’s tourism industry and especially for the restaurant industry,” says Inese Šīrava, director of the Latvian Investment and Development Agency (LIAA) Tourism Department. We can certainly understand the lure. But when only a small handful of restaurants in a country benefit from the exposure, we have to question the decision itself.
More importantly, this is a challenging decision to defend, since most travelers outside the Baltic Sea region have no idea what Latvian food is, what the cuisine and country are known for, its famous dishes like frikadeļu zupa (meatball soup), or other delicacies the area is known for like skābeņu zupa (sorrel soup), pīrādziņi (savory pastries) and griķi (buckwheat salad). Latvian dark rye bread is some of the world’s best, and stale rye bread roasted with garlic and oil or butter becomes one of the world’s most addictive bar snacks. In fact, it is so tasty, we think it is worth the trip to Latvia. Yet you won’t see it mentioned in most travel guides or marketing campaigns.
But back to gourmet positioning. A similar situation to Latvia happened in Greece in October 2023, when Michelin updated its list of best restaurants in Athens. Small countries like Greece with one major gateway city are profound witnesses to the centuries-old rural vs urban clash. Anyone who has been elsewhere in Greece knows that the entire country is a wonderland of food opportunities. Such occurrences underscore the extreme risk that can happen when a country “puts all its eggs in one basket” like with a Michelin guide. And unless an outstanding restaurant is located in a magical rural location like the former Fäviken in Sweden that closed in December 2019, rural culinary destinations and experiences are simply too hard for travelers to discover without a little extra help. We see Michelin as a resource that is best suited to document fancy experiences in large metropolitan areas, not rural, casual, sustainable or hotel dining experiences, extensions that have muddied Michelin’s gourmet brand and diluted its reach.
For true gourmet lovers, Michelin is the single best resource in the world to discover fine dining. Yet, we have to recall our PsychoCulinary profiling research. The entire universe of customers who seek gourmet dining on a consistent and regular basis is quite small. And these guides carry with them a stigma. A food-loving traveler who may not consider themselves to be “gourmet” may cross off a destination from their wish list if they see that it is following a gourmet path. Their rationale is simple, and they say, I don’t want to visit a destination with fancy and expensive restaurants. That is not who I am.” Whether or not that is the case, it is nevertheless the perception.
A major problem of so many destinations affiliated with a single gourmet brand, namely Michelin, is that all the Michelin-starred destinations start to compete with each other. Gourmet lovers are suddenly overwhelmed with so many new gourmet choices in Singapore, Thailand, Hong Kong, South Korea, Latvia, Estonia, Greece, etc. How will a potential visitor choose your destination when all destinations seem to be gourmet? The real culinary USPs, the reasons why food lovers travel, are buried deeply under that gourmet positioning.
Incidentally, our research has also shown that a restaurant guide of any kind, gourmet or not, is typically a mostly useless tool for travelers. The reasons are that visitors assume such guides are highly biased or that restaurants pay to be listed. In the case of Michelin guides, they show all non-gourmet travelers where they would not want to eat, and nothing else.
True food lovers crave more information about a destination’s cuisine. We want to get to know the culinary culture and heritage, famous dishes of course, as well as well-known ingredients that might be found, like truffles in parts of France, Italy and Spain. A book that does a great job of documenting the culinary culture and heritage is On va déguster Paris. It is just a bit large to carry with you on holiday.
Cities like Toronto are also aligning with Michelin. We would assume that in a city the size of Toronto, one would find many delicious gourmet options, as well as a lot of other great food that may or may not be distinctly Torontonian. What is the lure? The number of gourmet eateries in a city the size of Toronto, Hong Kong or Paris is easy enough to find by oneself. Just search one for “best restaurants in” or “gourmet dining in” and you will have a pretty short list, once you filter with other criteria such as part of town, price, cuisine, etc. Once again, putting all of a destination’s “eggs in one basket” labels the destination “gourmet” and shuns the overwhelming majority of culinary travelers who might still like the destination, but not when their perception is that it is only for gourmet lovers.
Destinations that are truly gourmet and which can carry the gourmet flag proudly are few and far between. The Basque Country, California’s Napa Valley and Tuscany, Italy come to mind. Many years ago, Peru tried to brand itself as a gourmet destination, but there are just a handful of truly gourmet restaurants in Lima. The rest of the country was ignored. The tourism office backpedaled and tried to promote more the local dishes and also indigenous foods. Missing was an introduction to products like the aceitunas de botija (sun-dried black olives) which are used in Peruvian dishes like ají de gallina. Peruvian black olives are probably the most flavorsome in the world, but you will find no mention of that anywhere in in any travel guides or promotions. You would have to discover that on your own, and probably by accident. And if you can’t speak Spanish with a local, or understand the Peruvian Spanish accent, then you’ll never learn why they are SO tasty (it is because they are cured in brine and then sun-dried). This is a missed marketing opportunity.
Food lovers are explorers first. A restaurant guide or list is of limited help. During our stay in a new destination, we will find our way to a farmers’ market, we might indulge in a cooking class with friends and family, we’ll roam through markets and stores to see what is on the shelves and often to buy food and beverage souvenirs, we’ll find the kind of café we like, we might go on a food tour, we might visit a winery, brewery or distillery, we might visit a cheese factory or food canning museum. And these are just a few examples of gastronomy experiences that we might find.
As explorers, we want to learn something about the culinary culture and heritage while we are there. Why are the raspberries so sweet? Why is dill so prevalent? Who first used fish sauce as an ingredient thousands of years ago? How is rice from Vietnam different from rice grown in Spain? What foods and drinks are enjoyed around the holidays and specifically, which holidays are prevalent in the destination? Is alcohol used in cooking? These are a few of food lovers’ burning questions.
Our team at the World Food Travel Association has been helping destinations to identify, organize and promote their culinary assets for more than two decades. Get in touch today to discuss how we can help your destination or message us on WhatsApp at +447827582554.
