Here is how much Florida says it paid to bring Michelin to Miami, Tampa and Orlando
Bringing the prestigious Michelin Guide to Florida is costing the state a fraction of what California paid just two years ago.
Visit Florida, the state’s marketing organization, has agreed in principle to pay the restaurant rating service Michelin Guide $150,000 of its total $75 million budget over the next year to create a new Florida guide, a Visit Florida spokesperson wrote the Miami Herald in an email late Friday.
The new guide, expected to publish in April 2022 when the Michelin Guide announces which restaurants it deemed worthy of its stars, will cover the Miami, Orlando and Tampa metro areas, according to an announcement Nov. 1.
However, the two sides have not signed a final contract and many of the details are still unknown. How long the partnership is set to last and whether there any other in-kind contributions from the state to Michelin Guide, will be announced “at a later date,” spokeswoman Meagan Dougherty Lowe wrote. When the contract is signed, Visit Florida will post it on its website, she said.
“This is a great opportunity to elevate Florida’s culinary scene and bring a positive economic impact to the state,” Dougherty Lowe wrote.
The $150,000 — if that ends up being the total of Visit Florida’s investment in the final contract — would amount to a quarter of the $600,000 that California’s marketing team paid in 2019 to sponsor Michelin expanding beyond the Bay Area to the rest of the state, which the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
Visit Florida’s $150,000 will cover a portion of the costs of Michelin producing its guide in these three new metro areas, Visit Florida wrote the Herald. That includes Michelin using its vast marketing and social media platform to spread the word on Florida’s restaurants, particularly its newly starred locations.
The Guide had existed in four American metro areas — New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and the Bay Area — for years, without dollars from tourism agencies before the sponsorship deal to expand in California.
The Michelin Guide has been expanding to other countries, supported by these sponsorships. The Korean Tourism Board paid about $1.8 million in a multi-year deal and Thailand contributes $800,000 a year to have the guide in their countries, according to Eater.com.
None of that cash ensures star-rated restaurants, a Michelin Guide spokesperson wrote the Miami Herald. Regardless, 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.”
This story was originally published November 5, 2021 at 6:18 PM.
