MIAMI — A $150,000 investment looked like a bargain when the state of Florida’s main tourism agency said that was what it took to attract the premiere restaurant reviewer Michelin Guide to rank the state’s restaurants.
The actual cost could be 10 times that amount.
Michelin Guide, the international dining guide that confers restaurants with up to three stars for top dining destinations, could be earning as much as $1.5 million over the next three years to produce a Florida guide.
The CEO of Visit Orlando, the area’s marketing agency, which uses state tourism dollars to market the city, told the Orlando Sentinel on Nov. 9 that it was paying Michelin Guide $116,000 a year for the next three years to include Orlando in a guide that would also comprise Miami-Dade County and the metropolitan Tampa area. That’s a total of $348,000 as part of a three-year deal for Visit Orlando alone.
Miami and Tampa’s tourism organizations confirmed to the Miami Herald that their contributions would be “in line with the other partners,” Rolando Aedo, chief operating officer of the Greater Miami Convention & Visitor’s Bureau, said during a phone call with Visit Tampa’s CEO, Santiago Corrada, late Wednesday.
That would put the total of the three local tourism agencies’ contributions over the course of a three-year deal at $1,044,000. Added to Visit Florida’s annual $150,000 contribution, Michelin Guide would be slated to take in $1,494,000 over the next three years.
“The money being invested in tourism is intended to bring in more tourism,” Corrada said.
The actual contract the local tourism agencies have with Michelin may never be seen.
Aedo claimed that even though the Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau receives public dollars from tourism taxes, its contract with Michelin is not public record, and he declined to share it. Non-disclosure agreements with each of the local organizations are in place, he noted.
“It potentially jeopardizes this project moving forward,” Aedo said of not disclosing the details.
Visit Florida has said its $150,000-a-year contract has not been finalized and will be posted to its website when it is signed by all parties.
Florida’s tourism agencies said the goal of this deal was to attract more international travelers, who know the Michelin Guide as a standard across Europe. International travelers “stay longer, they spend more, and Miami’s getting the lion’s share of the visitors that come to Florida,” Aedo told the Miami Herald earlier. The guide is available in only four U.S. areas: New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago and California. In 2019, the state of California paid $600,000 to help Michelin offset the cost of expanding from just the Bay Area to the rest of the state.
The guide also has been willing to bring its restaurant reviewers to new territories for the right price. The Korean Tourism Board paid $1.8 million for a multi-year deal to bring the guide to Seoul, and Thailand contributes more than $880,000 a year to sponsor a guide there, according to an Eater.com story.
Michelin maintains those payments help offset the cost of creating the guides — which exist online and printed — but don’t insure star ratings. Nevertheless, there is at least one restaurant rated with three stars — the highest honor — in each U.S. area in which Michelin has a guide. “The involvement of tourism boards or similar entities in publishing a new guide does not bear any influence whatsoever regarding the inspectors’ judgments,” Michelin spokeswoman Lauren McClure wrote the Herald, “for the restaurants in the selection, or the star awards.”
The restaurant industry, subject to untold losses during the coronavirus pandemic, would expect to see a boost with individual restaurants potentially becoming international destinations. And Aedo added that the guide goes beyond the star rating, also highlighting best bang for your buck restaurants and those that commit to sustainability — buzzwords that high-end diners look for.
“What we want to do is help one of our most important industries,” Aedo said.
