Gastronomy as a Creative Industry in a digital context. Analysis of the websites and social networks of the Spanish restaurants with Michelin star

Abstract

Over the last few years, the increasing success of gastronomy has been evident, not only as an economic market but also from a communicative perspective. Understanding it as a Creative Industry, gastronomy is becoming more important in the communication market and strategic, which gradually approach the restaurant industry to everyone, are being developed by democratizing the art of cooking and making it an accessible and available talent to everyone.

In a full development context, strategies and communication resources used by both the media and the restaurants themselves and culinary professionals, are to become the main objective necessary to understand, for example, how the communication resources are exploited and what their effect is along with their opportunities.

This article focuses on a content analysis of the main web resources used by eight Spanish restaurants awarded three stars by the Michelin Guide Spain-Portugal (2014). The main objective is trying to know the online communication strategy undertaken by these restaurants and to establish the importance given to Web resources contributing both their own brands consolidation and the development of the gastronomic Creative Industry itself. The results show some disparity in the use of both web resources and social media. Thus, the restaurant industry and the Spanish restoration has a challenge: to continue providing a stronger engagement with the two-way communication and inviting their audiences to participate, in order to attract new contacts, to ensure current customer’s loyalty and to convert new contacts into customers and influencers.