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The famous red book by the French tyre manufacturer has announced that it is joining forces with online review platform TripAdvisor and online booking platform TheFork to “offer diners a complementary way to find their ideal dining experience, as well as improved access to a wider choice of high-quality restaurants around the world.”
“Michelin and TripAdvisor, with its subsidiary TheFork, have entered into a content and licensing partnership to combine the gastronomic selection expertise of the Michelin Guide with the power of TripAdvisor’s large customer audience and TheFork’s advanced booking service,” a statement said.
The deal is seen as an opening up of the Michelin rating which can sometimes be hard to decipher for diners. Unless you own a physical copy of the Michelin Guide books, it can be a challenge to understand which restaurants have stars and how many in a particular country, region or city.
The new partnership should make it easier for customers to locate them, and on the face of it, looks like a tipple win for all involved.
Other details of the new partnership include:
- All 14,000 restaurants in the Michelin Guide worldwide will be identified with their star, Bib Gourmand and plate distinctions on the TripAdvisor website. This will lead to “improved accessibility of the Michelin selection,” it says.
- Nearly 4,000 restaurants across Europe will soon be accessible and bookable on TheFork, and on the digital Michelin Guide platform.
- Michelin has also signed an agreement to sell Bookatable, the U.K. restaurant booking platform it acquired in January 2016, to TheFork, a subsidiary of TripAdvisor. This acquisition allows TheFork to “consolidate its existing markets” and expand into five new countries: U.K., Germany, Austria, Finland, and Norway. It will now operate in 22 markets. The 14,000 restaurants bookable on Bookatable will join the 67,000 already bookable on TheFork, “creating the largest online restaurant booking platform.”
