HOW MELBOURNE LANDED THE WORLD'S 50 BEST RESTAURANTS AWARDS
Melbourne a accueilli la cérémonie récompensant les 50 meilleurs restaurants au monde
Quand on parle de l’Australie, on évoque ses grands espaces et sa nature sauvage plus que ses atouts gastronomiques. Vous découvrirez dans cet article comment, à l’occasion de la remise d’un prix pour professionnels organisé à Melbourne, l’office du tourisme australien a pu monter une délicieuse opération marketing. Mais a-t-elle vraiment porté ses fruits ?
MELBOURNE, Australia — London. New York. Melbourne. No argument: The first two cities are international culinary capitals. But Melbourne?
2. This city, Australia’s second largest, was chosen to host the World’s 50 Best Restaurants awards this year, with ceremonies held on April 5 at the historic Royal Exhibition Building. It is only the third city to have hosted the awards, after London and New York.
3. For lovers of Melbourne’s food scene, it would be nice to think that the city’s edible riches — its cafes and laneway restaurants, its vast multicultural menu — are what attracted the awards. But the real credit goes to a campaign by Tourism Australia and Visit Victoria to woo event organizers with visits, services, infrastructure and money.
4. In the process, Australia grabbed the attention of hundreds of visiting journalists and chefs, as well as a global audience who watched the livestreaming of the ceremony. The nation also landed a second restaurant on the list — Brae, in Birregurra, Victoria, at No. 44, joining Attica, in Melbourne, also in Victoria, which edged up to No. 32 from the 33rd place it won last year.
WHAT ARE THE WORLD’S 50 BEST RESTAURANTS AWARDS?
5. “It’s a great opportunity for us to showcase what we’ve got to the world,” the Melbourne chef Frank Camorra said at an evening event April 4 for the international news media that celebrated the food and drink of the city. “But was it a surprise they chose to come here? Well, yes, it’s quite a surprise.” Asked why he thought the city had attracted the awards, Camorra said, “I don’t know, but I’d assume it was a lot of political machinations.”
6. The awards, which began in 2002, have their critics, who object to (among other things) an abundance of corporate sponsors, a dearth of
female chefs on the list and the ease with which they say restaurants and others can game the vote. For the first 14 years, though, the list and awards — an offshoot of Restaurant magazine, based in London, and William Reed Business Media — held the ceremony in London. But given the list’s international scope, it made sense to branch out. The World’s 50 Best is now on what the organizers call a “global tour” that started last year with awards ceremonies in New York.
7. “To be perfectly honest, we were trying to be easy on ourselves that first year,” said William Drew, the editor of the list and of Restaurant magazine. “New York is not the hardest place to get to from London, and it has all the obvious benefits of being a world food capital. From there we were thinking, ‘Where next?'”
YOU ARE INVITED
8. Much like the Olympics, the global tour has prompted cities to vie for consideration as host locations, in the hope that the awards will bring visibility, recognition and, in time, tourism dollars. “Australia had indicated quite some time ago that they would be interested in having us,” Drew said. “It was an ongoing conversation with Tourism Australia.”
9. Last year, Tim Brooke-Webb, the list’s managing director, took two trips to Australia — one to Melbourne and one to Sydney — to scout possible locations for the awards. Tourism Australia paid for his flights and accommodations.
10. “As you can imagine, they set foot in Melbourne and we turned it on,” said Melanie de Souza, the director of international marketing for Visit Victoria. “It was not going to be a choice for them as far as we were concerned.” This meant wining and dining them in Melbourne’s best restaurants and discussing what the city could offer as a destination for the awards, said John O’Sullivan, the managing director of Tourism Australia.
A BIG CAMPAIGN
11. The quest to lure the World’s 50 Best is only one prong of a many-faceted strategy by Tourism Australia. The country has long attracted tourists for its physical assets — Sydney Harbor, the
it was not going to be a choice for them cela allait être une évidence pour eux / as far as en ce qui / to wine and dine inviter à manger (et déguster du vin). 11. quest quête, effort / to lure attirer, séduire / prong branche; ici, aspect, facette / long ici, depuis longtemps / asset atout / harbor port / outback, the Great Barrier Reef — but research conducted by Tourism Australia in 2012 showed “quite a disparity between how highly regarded Australia was, for food and wine, between the people who had already visited versus those who hadn’t,” de Souza said. In an era when food is driving more travel decisions than ever before, the country had an underused weapon in its tourism arsenal.
12. In 2013, Tourism Australia started a campaign to raise the profile of the country’s food and drink. It includes not only traditional marketing and advertising, but also the courting of bloggers and journalists from around the world who have been flown in and entertained. But good food alone, many say, is not enough to attract accolades or tourists. “You don’t just do an advertisement and put some food in it and people will think, ‘Australia has great food and wine,'” O’Sullivan said. “You have to really work it and work over it.”