Good morning from Skift. It’s Wednesday, May 8. Here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today.
Atlanta Tourism Chief Talks World Cup, Deal With Michelin
23.04.2024 - 20:27 / skift.com / Dawit Habtemariam
FIFA World Cup fans are going to need a home base as they follow their favorite teams across North America in 2026. A top contender is Atlanta, said Discover Atlanta CEO and President William Pate, who sits on the city’s hosting committee.
“Fans could end up staying in Atlanta, but traveling to different cities for other games,” said Pate.
Pate spoke with Skift about why Atlanta could be the home base for World Cup fans, the city’s $1 million investment deal with the Michelin Guide, its new 1,000 convention room hotel downtown, and more.
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Skift: Discover Atlanta recently paid to have Michelin rate its restaurants— an expensive endeavor for tourism boards. What has been the return on investment?
William Pate: We did a three-year deal with them. It’s basically a million-dollar deal in order to be a part of the Michelin Guide. We’re the seventh city in the United States to be selected.
We have a lot of chefs and chef-driven restaurants and 23 different cuisine types, but we really didn’t feel like we were getting credit for that. We thought that associating our culinary theme with the Michelin brand would really be the opportunity that we were looking for to elevate the entire city’s restaurant industry.
We began discussions with Michelin before Covid. Interestingly enough, they were exploring Atlanta already as a potential Michelin city. As we came out of Covid, those conversations heated up again very quickly.
They’ve announced their first year and our restaurant community did really well. We had 45 total restaurants in the guide. Five got Michelin stars.
The ancillary benefit that we were looking for, which is to get the community talking about all the great restaurants that we have really had, I’ll be honest, exceeded our expectations, and we had high expectations.
I usually like to do quantitative numbers, but I can tell you qualitatively, I’ve been told that of the restaurants that were selected this first year, their business is up about 30%. But I can also tell you, talking to restaurants that weren’t selected in the guide, their business is up about 10%.
The other value that it created not only with visitors but also locally is it re-energized our culinary scene. The people who were coming out of Covid re-energized this desire to eat out and not have the food delivered to your house, but really get out and have a restaurant experience.
Atlanta is going to host eight matches, three of which are knockout ones. How is Atlanta preparing for the tournament?
We’re in planning mode right now. It’s an interesting situation with the World Cup in that you don’t know what countries are going to be coming until next year.
We’re expecting very big crowds and we’re very excited. The good news for
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