Club Med is putting together a week-long conference that will gather together popular food writers and bloggers - to mingle, network and share tricks of the trade - but that also will be open to other guests and members of the public who pay a hefty fee to stay at the resort during the conference and hob-nob with their favorite foodies.
The event, "Food Blogger Camp by Club Med," is part of a growing movement by companies to bring together influential bloggers and generate online buzz about their services while they're doing it. It also represents a big push to leverage the blogging community as an attraction in itself.
The Club Med program will be held at the company's Ixtapa Pacific Mexican resort January 2010, is “a chance for food bloggers to share their expertise and insights in hands-on workshops…and explore the elements that make for a successful food blog,” said Elise Bauer, founder of Simply Recipes, a popular food and cooking blog with more than 3 million unique monthly users.
Club Med, which is marketing the event with a series of online and traditional tactics, is requiring guests to stay at the hotel for three to seven nights (at $599-$999 a pop) during the event week in order to participate in the program.
The event will include workshop seminars for participants on how to build and improve a food blog and incorporate photography and multimedia. Successful food authors will share insights on how participants can get their work published. Additionally, bloggers will lead walking tours of the area’s markets, where participants can try local foods.
Wine Enthusiasts Blog, Meet Too
Such food-related blogger conferences are becoming a more regular phenomenon as a means for novice bloggers to learn first-hand about the experiences of their more-established peers.
The Open Wine Consortium and Zephyr Wine Adventures are among two sponsors behind the Wine Bloggers’ Conference planned for June 2010 in Walla Walla, Washington.
That event will include wine blogging sessions, local vineyard and winery visits, and a complete wine blogger awards ceremony.
Did Food Bloggers Cook “Gourmet”
In an indication of just how much of an impact the web and the food blogging movement has had on the media lanscape, Newsweek’s Jennie Yabroff, in a blog post earlier this month entitled “How Food Blogs Led to the Demise of ‘Gourmet,’" wrote that the recent closure of Conde Nast’s Gourmet magazine was partly the result of foodies migrating to the blogosphere for their reading.
“If the popularity of food blogs is any indication,” wrote Yabroff, “our current vision of ourselves, as preparers and consumers of meals, is not as kitchen pros who can magically make the complicated look effortless” – as was the case for Gourmet magazine readers – “but as bumbling amateurs who can miraculously pull together a meal that actually tastes good.”
