In October of 2024, in the Tuscan city of Lucca, the owners of the restaurant Giglio made the unusual request of having their Michelin star removed from the 2025 edition of the prestigious Michelin Guide.
According to co-owner, Benedetto Rullo, the accolade had become a burden and the owners feared deterring their core customer base with an overly formal atmosphere. This phenomenon, known in the industry as the “Michelin curse”, is an example of the potential negative impact of expert endorsements such as Michelin stars. But what happens when a restaurant loses its Michelin stars?
New research by the UCL School of Management’s Associate Professor Yiting Deng explores the impact of expert opinions on consumer satisfaction and finds that losing a Michelin star can in fact lead to higher consumer ratings, challenging the conventional belief that losing a star is detrimental to business.
The paper, published in Management Science, finds that consumers become less demanding, more forgiving of service and ultimately more satisfied with value at restaurants that have lost a star.
Discussing the paper’s recent publication, Dr. Deng said:
“Our research challenges the widespread belief that expert rating downgrades are always harmful to business. The findings highlight the importance of expectation management and suggest new strategies for fine-dining restaurants to maintain customer satisfaction and profitability after changes in expert recognition.”
Dr. Deng and her co-authors analysed nearly 900,000 TripAdvisor reviews across 262 Michelin-awarded restaurants and over 1000 comparable control restaurants. Using two advanced synthetic control-based methods, they isolated the effects of Michelin star changes to support their findings.
The authors found that when restaurants lose Michelin stars, consumers become less focused on value-for-money and less critical of service quality. This shift in sentiment suggests that lowered expert ratings may ease the pressure on restaurants to meet elevated expectations, ultimately leading to more favourable reviews.
To test this, the researchers used a Latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) model to analyse the language of TripAdvisor reviews. Five dominant themes emerged: value for money; issues with order; menu and food; service and staff; and overall experience. Following a downgrade, mentions of value for money and service and staff complaints declined, while praise for service and staff and overall satisfaction increased.
Interestingly, the reverse did not hold true. Restaurants that gained Michelin stars did not see a corresponding decline in consumer ratings.
Expert endorsements, though sought after, may be a double-edged sword. They can attract attention, prestige and raise reputation, but they can also raise the bar for customer expectations that may be difficult to meet and to maintain.
