Logistics behind the Restaurant Weeks

Restaurant Weeks have become a popular way to promote destination travel in recent years.  There are the big, well known events like New York Restaurant Week and Miami Spice, but lots of small, but amazing tourist towns, have restaurant weeks now as well including Jackson (Mississippi), Medellin (Colombia), Bogota (Colombia), Lima (Peru), and Rio de Janeiro (Brazil).  As Cartagena rapidly develops on the international stage, Cartagena Restaurant Week 2017 (#CRW2017) helps put us on the map as a world class destination.

There are many constituents who have come together to make #CRW2017 possible and each benefits in a different way, but mostly all the foodies out there who will visit Cartagena and experience amazing food at a terrific price.  With more than 60 restaurants participating in the first year of CRW, locals and tourists will all have a chance to taste some spectacular international and local food.  The prices for restaurants are so good, in fact, that we encourage local “Cartageneros” to try multiple restaurants in the course of 10 days.

Restaurants are already benefitting from the collaborative efforts of everyone involved with pre-booking of reservations through the first comprehensive online table reservation solution for all of Cartagena.  Restaurants have an opportunity to reach out to locals who have more potential to be repeat customers than tourists, but they also get to highlight their best offerings globally through a digital marketing campaign which is dramatically enhanced by the number of people and organizations supporting it.  It’s definitely a case of 1+1=3 in terms of the combined social media power of all of these restaurants collaborating.

The amazing sponsors of Cartagena Restaurant Week in 2017 are benefitting by exposing their brand locally and internationally to diners, promoting the City of Cartagena where they do business, and of course, by sharing their products and brands with restaurants who buy liquor, wine, payment processing services, and other services offered by the sponsors. Jetsemani, which is managing the media buying for CRW2017 has made special efforts to ensure a high return on investment for the sponsors through brand and product exposure in paid and earned media.

It’s hard not to mention the Cartagena Chamber of Commerce whose ideas, creativity and financial sponsorship were critical to launching this event as part of their Ruta Gastronómica.  The Chamber of Commerce has worked hard to make sure this event generates value for all constituents and has pushed everyone involved to measure the results in a way that we can justify doing it again.  So, as CRW2017 wraps up in August, look to the organizing team to publish as much data as possible on the benefits of CRW2017 to the city, the consumers, the restaurants, and the sponsors.

If you want to participate or support Cartagena Restaurant Week and to promote Cartagena, please visit www.cartagenarestaurantweek.co, book a reservation for your favorite type of food, and post the link to Facebook or share it on Instagram.