Michelin Guide Owner Buys Tablet Hotels to Build a Travel Business
Photo Credit: Pictured is a standard harbor view room at Hotel Icon in Hong Kong. Tablet Hotels, a booking site that curates luxury and boutique hotels, was acquired by Michelin. Hotel Icon/MCT
Skift Take
Tablet Hotels found itself a world-class strategic buyer to propel its growth. Tablet as part of Michelin will face huge marketing hurdles, and the challenge of trying to reshape Michelin's legacy guide offerings.
Michelin, the France-based tire company that publishes Michelin guides for restaurants and tours, quietly acquired the booking site Tablet Hotels in October.
The goal of the deal, which was announced Monday, is to have the Tablet Hotels team lead the digital transformation of the print-oriented Michelin Red Guides for restaurants and Green Guides for tourism, and to build a larger travel vertical, Tablet Hotels co-founder and CEO Laurent Vernhes told Skift.
"Revenue from the Michelin Guides is a rounding error," Vernhes said. "They believe it could be more than that."
In fact, in 2017 Michelin, which has a market cap of $18.8 billion, created a Michelin Experiences unit to combine and grow its various travel-related assets, and has tested things such as offering Chinese travelers kitchen tours with chefs at Michelin-starred restaurants. The company also has ambitions to create a Michelin club, which would build on the learnings of the Tablet Plus membership club, Vernhes said.
