Few honors are greater for chefs than receiving a Michelin Star, but with low potential for B2C revenues from dining, we were counting on hotel bookings to be the foundation of our B2C strategy. The only problems were that Michelin had little credibility in hotels and was hampered by a multi-level awareness challenge

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• Consumers didn’t equate Michelin Guide with commerce. It was not top of mind for hotel booking, even gaps among those who had booked or engaged with hotels on the MG app/website.

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• Understanding of the Guide was poor. There was a baseline understanding of MG hotel curation in most markets, but:

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• How can I use it? Even if curation was clear, awareness of hotel ratings & reviews was soft, and most markets had low awareness of the ability to book hotels on MG

 

• Where can I access it? Our association with MG books outweighed apps in a bunch of markets, and even awareness of our website wasn’t great

 

• What does it mean? The definition of hotel (and restaurant) curation was a little fuzzy. Global vs European? Fine dining / luxury hotels only or a broader but still curated range?

 

Announcing a Michelin Star equivalent for hotels - the Michelin Key, was our way to excite hoteliers and the press to spread the word on our behalf and announce that there was a new major player in the hospitality industry.

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We held a press event in Paris in October 2023, generating 150 media reports in 5 days, followed by >200 more over the next 2 months, and followed up with a 2nd press event in Tokyo to relay the same message to the Asian market. We announced the inaugural Michelin Key selections in batches throughout 2024, kicking things off with France in April 2024, and released the first global selection in October 2025.