Idea 13 of 500. Cluster 1: Stay longer (the $2.4 billion gap)
Farm stays where the guest works a morning in the paddy or the spice garden
The mechanism, from the book
If Sri Lanka earned what the Maldives earns per visitor, the visitors it already has would bring in $2.4 billion a year more.
Every idea in cluster 1 uses this mechanism.
A first step
Arrange with a paddy farmer or spice grower you know for a guest to work alongside them for one morning, then run it once with a friend from abroad as the test guest. Photograph the morning, write down what the guest did and ate, and offer the package to three guesthouses nearby to sell. The first paid booking through a guesthouse is your proof.
- Who pays first
- Families with children and curious travellers who want to do something real, and the guesthouses that want an activity to sell them.
- What leaves today
- The farm earns only the crop price; a paying guest in the field adds income the harvest cannot, and a reason to stay another day.
The idea and the mechanism are from the book. The first step was written for this site as a suggestion; if you know a better one, say so.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
The only test any idea on this site has to pass. The four rules that go with it are here.
In the book
- Ch. FiveThe Most Photographed Rock in the World
The stay shortened by nearly a quarter, and the $2.4 billion gap
More from cluster 1
- 1Boutique eco-lodges with heritage views
- 2Luxury treehouse stays in forest margins
- 3Glamping with proper service, at sites with none
- 4Heritage homestays in family houses
- 5Floating cabanas on the ancient reservoirs
- 6Forest holiday villages on the Center Parcs model: lodges among the trees, a covered pool, bikes and a lake, so a family stays a week, not a night
Idea 13 of the 500 in the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? Every one can be started by one person, one family or one small firm.