Chef Bella Jones at her upcoming restaurant Liz and Leon’s Southern Kitchen in downtown Atlanta.
Photo by Miguel Martinez/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution/TNS
ATLANTA, GA — When Marsha Archer asked her children where they wanted to eat recently, she expected them to come with a suggestion culled from various foodie websites on the internet.
Instead, they went to the place many Generation Z’ers prefer for information — TikTok.
“Ma, why do all that when you can just look at TikTok,” she said her children told her. “I was surprised because they were not about all that searching at all.”
In the world of hospitality where word of mouth is king, the ways hotels and restaurants reach an audience is no longer limited to heralding the bona fides they’ve received from traditional gatekeepers like the James Beard Foundation or a five-star rating from Forbes.
Now it’s all about influencers on YouTube and TikTok, being photographed for an Instagram story or trying non-traditional marketing strategies such as popping up in Fortnite or other videogames, experts say.
“Marriott did an experiment recently where they put a hotel into Fortnite — a Westin — because that’s where a lot of young consumers are getting their information,” said Joe Collier, president and founder of Mainsail Lodging and Development, owner of Marriott’s Epicurean Hotel in Midtown.
For hotel and restaurant operators the goal is to balance their appeal to all generations, which in recent years has meant broadening their social media game beyond hashtags, drone videos capturing a property’s beauty or monitoring ad placement to ensure their brands don’t appear next to offensive content on Facebook or X, the new name for Twitter.
It has meant reaching out to content creators whose following can drive visitation or aligning with social media mavens who consumers trust.
“The role of public relations and marketing is to figure out which influencer or brand has the biggest impact on your business,” said Jeremy Gilston, vice president of hotel consultancy R.M. Woodworth & Associates. “That, I think, is still hard to sift through.”
Make-or-break influence
That’s critical because a bad influencer experience can create headaches for a business.
An October visit by popular TikTok restaurant reviewer Keith Lee, for instance, set Atlanta’s restaurant scene ablaze after he criticized some of the city’s Black-owned restaurants, including College Park’s The Real Milk & Honey and Atlanta’s Old Lady Gang, owned by singer and “The Real Housewives of Atlanta” star Kandi Burruss.
In his visit to Old Lady Gang, Lee, who has 14 million TikTok followers, sent family members ahead of his arrival. They were told there was a wait of as much as 90 minutes, according to media reports. But when he arrived, staff said he would be seated almost immediately.
The revelation led to widespread criticism of the eatery and a November panel discussion on the state of the city’s dining establishments.
Archer, president of M-Squared Public Relations, said influencers are valuable in cities like Atlanta because options for whatever someone is looking for are so plentiful that many seeking guidance lean on social media personalities who align with their tastes.
“Everywhere has an influencer,” she said. “There might be a lifestyle influencer who focuses on shopping, eating and cosmetics. But when you get to bigger cities, those influencers are not focusing on three or four things. They pick one thing and they do it exceptionally well and they become your go-to person.”
Bella Jones, an Atlanta chef and owner of forthcoming south downtown restaurant Liz & Leon’s, said diners eat with their eyes and influencers are positioned to capitalize on the visuals of dining quicker than others.
“We still use the media, but you have to grow with the times,” she said. “Everyone is on their phones. I have two friends that I have a dinner date with every Friday. And when we are looking for restaurants we are going to Instagram, we’re going on TikTok, we’re going to influencers that do their work via social media because it’s faster and you get to see people’s experiences.”
Beware the superficial
But she cautioned that what an influencer presents can be superficial and not a true representation of what a diner may get.
“They are just showing you a five second snippet of the decor,” she said. “They might take a picture of a plate, but then when you get there … the food is terrible.”
Such situations demonstrate that while influencers are helpful, it’s still important to use traditional marketing approaches and support tried-and-true methods of getting the word out, industry experts said.
Atlanta hospitality leaders cheered in October when the respected Michelin Guide created its first-ever listing of the city’s best eateries. And the city’s luxury hotels covet the stars or diamonds they receive annually from Forbes’ and AAA’s lodging ratings because they are a signal that rooms costing $1,000 a night or more are worth it for their audience.
“For the type of client who uses a luxury hotel, the stars are important to them,” said Juan Gonzalez Izquierdo, general manager of the four-star Waldorf Astoria Atlanta in Buckhead. “It says (to customers) you are able to deliver service at the next level.”
But Izquierdo said luxury properties work with influencers, too. To compete in today’s marketplace, it’s important to have a multi-pronged approach that works across platforms, from traditional advertising and stories in magazines and newspapers to social media outlets like TikTok and Instagram, he said.
“We cater to every guest,” he said. “We welcome everybody to the hotel. The only barrier may be price.”
The ratings systems can also sometimes be confusing to ordinary diners or hotel visitors, the experts said. Many consumers equate travelers’ five-star reviews on sites such as hotels.com or OpenTable with the professional rating systems.
That has blurred the lines on the value of a five-diamond hotel such as the St. Regis Atlanta and five stars given to a Holiday Inn Express location. Both properties offer exceptional quality but have different approaches on which they are judged by the professional ratings outfits.
That’s not always a bad thing, said Norwood Smith, Mainsail’s vice president of sales and marketing.
“I think that is where you see a major shift in consumers,” he said. “I don’t think they’re driven by stars anymore. I think what they look for is an experience and something that is really unique.”
Rob Parker, president of Fayetteville’s mixed-use development Town at Trilith, agreed. As the development prepared to open its first boutique hotel — Trilith Guesthouse — he said results speak louder than any marketing campaign no matter how it’s evaluated or who is creating the narrative.
“Our restaurants at Trilith are marketing to an incredibly diverse group of culinary guests,” he said. “While social media, print and radio are all critical, our No. 1 marketing tool is delivering a remarkable guest experience and encouraging them to tell our story.”
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