It is still often a shock to see that a famous person, a very famous person, is in our city, walking through our streets as if nothing had happened. The fascination and surprise is even greater if it is revealed that they have visited a restaurant that, for whatever reason, we know well. We read: “Dua Lipa at the DelaCrem ice cream parlour with her partner, Callum Turner” and madness breaks out in Barcelona. The queues at that establishment, already quite long, are beginning to compete with those at a record signing for Operación Triunfo. “Best potato omelette in Barcelona, Bar del Pollo,” tweets Rosalía: shock. It is clear that, in a world in which social networks continue to be key when it comes to forging and establishing trends, an event like this can alter the destiny (and the bottom line) of a business, be it a hotel, a restaurant or an ice cream parlour. But it also changes the experience of their customers. It is true that some entrepreneurs in the sector dream of something like this happening to them, and they try to provoke this type of reaction by inviting influencers or even micro-influencers in an attempt to make their businesses go viral. Others opt for the opposite, even though they do not hide that they are, or have been in a more or less distant past, a refuge for celebrities: today they have turned privacy into one of their services, a vital one, in many cases. More information“In this matter there is an issue of choosing your business model,” say Mahin Chawdhury and Marta Cebrián López, founders of the consultancy MCL Food Consulting, specialized in catering and luxury hotels. “In the end, if you are an experiential, aspirational restaurant, with a visually very powerful, very trendy product, you combine music with food… It seems to me to a certain extent necessary to seek a certain level of visibility, because the level of investment is very high. One of your claims may be celebrities. “It is completely legal and there are many restaurants, especially some in very touristy cities, that are based on it,” they explain. “Judging this type of business model is complex,” says David Salgado, director of Badebles Hotels, a company that manages several hospitality establishments in Catalonia and Ibiza. “In reality, each hotel or restaurant positions its strategy as it believes most appropriate, and the truth is that it is good that there are all kinds of businesses,” he argues. “The situation has changed enormously,” he continues, “we have gone from walls with framed photos of the most illustrious visitors to social networks, where the discourse is completely reversed. You can lead the conversation and post photos and videos on your corporate profiles with these types of clients (as long as they agree) and the truth is that it helps a lot with the positioning of the establishment. It is an attraction. People come to you with the hope of meeting some famous person during their stay, their lunch or their dinner. On the other hand, you can also take the opposite strategy, not making this attractive part of your business visible and selling exclusivity through experience and service. There are many examples of this in Ibiza, we are one of them.” Salgado refers specifically to the hotel La Torre del Canónigo, an establishment located in the old part of the Balearic island with more than 25 years of history, but which had previously been a guest house visited by hippies, rockers or personalities such as Salvador Dalí, Jean-Paul Gaultier or Audrey Hepburn. The option, in this case, and in that of the restaurant Corsario, which they also manage, is clear: “We take the identity of all our guests with the greatest discretion and anonymity possible. If they are also people with a public profile, we redouble our efforts because what we want to guarantee is their peace of mind without the expectation that may come from outside altering the normal operation of our hotel, our services and the well-being of those who choose us to have the best stay.”“There is the paradox of clients who, when they visit Ibiza for promotion, stay in a type of hotel where the media knows they are staying, but when they really want to rest and no one knows where or who they are with, they come to ours,” says Salgado. “We understand that each company plans its communication strategy based on what it understands it needs for the objectives it sets,” explains Lina Bustos, partner and co-owner of Paraíso de los Pinos, a complex of exclusive apartments and villas located in the heart of Formentera that has its own restaurant, Es mal pas. She has no doubts: “Our project always had a clear objective: to be that corner of Formentera where you can enjoy the authentic essence of the island, from a concept of tranquility, intimacy and exclusivity.” And for all of the above to be possible, the strictest privacy is necessary. “The fact that the marketing strategy of certain hotels or establishments is to silence and not use celebrities as a draw seems perfect to me, especially in hotels and restaurants of a certain level,” they say from MCL Food Consulting. “Some do use celebrities as a draw, but in the vast majority, especially in luxury hotels, privacy is an added value and is extremely necessary. One thing is 'I'm Rosalía and I'm going to eat at Bar El Pollo to show that I like the local cuisine and that I'm still connected to Barcelona', and another thing is that you're George Clooney and you go to a hotel in a cove in Mallorca because what you want is to rest and disconnect.” Internationally famous actors, football coaches and world champion pilots stay at both establishments, two of the most prestigious on their respective islands. However, Bustos and Salgado explain little or nothing about them. After a bit of begging, the latter does tell a story with two great singing stars involved. “A few years ago, two of our recurring international VIP visitors were Mariah Carey and Madonna. They both loved one of our most premium rooms (coincidentally the same one). One year, like every season, they both booked that room, with the problem that they wanted to do it on the same dates. Their schedules made it impossible for either of them to change their plans or schedule, so the decision fell entirely on us, who offered the room to the first of them who had requested it.” Which of the two got the room? Salgado does not give away any details and clarifies that she is telling the story because it happened a few years ago and this type of world stars are used to traveling with very large security measures that make operations in hotels like hers very complicated. “The world has changed and the way in which stars travel today has also changed,” she says, “the good thing is that Ibiza continues to be a favorite destination for all of them.”
Is it possible to be fashionable while maintaining the essence?
MCL Food Consulting is convinced that it is possible to become fashionable while maintaining its essence. In their opinion, it is not essentially negative that there are celebrities who help a restaurant to stand out and they give as an example those who have appeared in the Netflix series Chef's Table. “The demand to go to all these restaurants has skyrocketed and that does not mean that they have to die of success,” they explain. “If demand increases, you have to have a bit of strategic vision and gradually increase the staff, improve operations, it should be the door to professionalize the restaurant. A restaurant with a good dining room and kitchen team, good management, good reservation management, should not have problems accepting more customers.”Taylor Swift leaving Lucalli Pizza in Brooklyn, New York, in January 2024. Robert Kamau (GC Images)“We don’t shy away from social media visibility at all costs, we just avoid it when there’s a chance it could conflict with our customers’ privacy,” admits Lina Bustos. “We don’t think media popularity is a problem in itself as long as it doesn’t affect our customers’ peace of mind or privacy, as that would be going against the goals that define our strategy. “It wouldn’t make sense.”“If one of our VIP clients decides to take a photo while dining from the viewing terrace of our restaurant, we can only be grateful,” admits David Salgado, “but we don’t encourage it, and never, in all these years, has that exposure changed our way of doing things.”“If you are lucky or unlucky (but we believe it is lucky) enough to have a traditional restaurant business or a hotel where, suddenly, some famous person comes and decides to talk about you, above all, you have to congratulate yourself because you do things very well,” they explain from MCL Food Consulting. “In the end, being chosen means that you are part of the selection of that city, town or region,” they conclude.