Michelin tips

Michelin announced its top picks for U.S. hotels Wednesday, using its new hotel “key” system. Only a small number of hotels across seven cities made the cut.

Good morning from Skift. It’s Wednesday, April 24. Here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today.

Michelin began rating hotels this month, starting with 189 properties in France. Yet many of the hotels that received coveted Michelin “keys” didn’t overlap with the list of best-rated hotels at online review sites. What gives?

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Michelin on Monday awarded 24 French hotels with “Three Keys” – its highest rating in a new hotel rating system that will be rolling out globally this year.   

Deepak Ohri has stepped down as CEO of Bangkok-based Lebua Hotels, and now, for the first time, is sharing with Skift what’s next: An entrepreneurial venture that will debut in Napa Valley in the U.S.

Michelin Guide, whose star ratings are coveted by restaurants worldwide, said on Thursday it would begin designating “the most exceptional hotels.”

Israel’s Tel Aviv could be the next stop for a Michelin Guide, following a series of inaugural editions released around different corners of the world last year. After years of planning, the Israeli Tourism Minister Haim Katz announced February 1 that the ministry would be moving forward with bringing the guide to the country for the first time.

TIAN, an entirely vegetarian Michelin-star restaurant in Vienna, won me over with the epigram on the paper menu. “Here’s to the spinach nobody likes, the fennel nobody gets,” it began, being no less adorable for being derived from a famous Apple commercial. It included evocative pairings like “badass quince” and “sassy chanterelle.” (For what it’s worth, these also work well as terms of endearment.)

On July 25, 2023, Colombian-born celebrity chef Juan Manuel Barrientos’ Michelin-starred Elcielo Miami will open its second location at the SLS South Beach. This marks another milestone for the restaurant’s growing expansion— in addition to Miami, Elcielo currently has locations in Medellín, Bogotá, and Washington, D. C., the latter of which was the first Colombian restaurant to have attained a Michelin star— as well as for SLS South Beach’s portfolio of culinary destinations. The new restaurant will be located at the space previously occupied by The Bazaar by José Andrés, which was reimagined by designer Philippe Starck.