Starter Kit. Idea 101 of 500. Cluster 5
Ayurvedic treatment centres to international standard
The mechanism, from the book
Ayurveda is a system of medicine the world already recognises and seeks out. The demand is there; what Sri Lanka needs is more of its own names, known and asked for abroad.
The first step
Write down the four things a European guest would want to check before booking a centre: the practitioner's qualification, the hygiene, a written treatment plan and a published price list. Visit three centres near you and see which could meet all four within a month. Then ask a travel agent who sells the island to Europeans whether a centre publishing all four would get their bookings, and at what nightly price. That price is your answer.
- Who pays first
- A European or Gulf visitor who wants Ayurveda but will not book a centre whose standards they cannot check before they fly.
- What leaves today
- The treatment is Sri Lankan, but the premium goes to whichever centre, anywhere, can show a guest its standard before the booking is made.
Ask first
- Department of Ayurveda. Ask what registration a treatment centre needs and who must be on staff.
- Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority. Ask how a wellness centre with rooms registers for tourists.
Check before you spend
That every practitioner is registered, that the centre holds the registration it needs, and that guests' medical histories are checked before treatment.
Find out these three numbers
- What do guests abroad pay for a week of treatment?
- How many registered practitioners are available in the area?
- Which agents abroad sell wellness stays?
A comparison from the book
Sigiriya. Chapter Five
"In the other version they arrive, and there is a treatment waiting"
A treatment on arrival is part of what makes the visitor stay longer.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.