Idea 18 of 500. Cluster 1: Stay longer (the $2.4 billion gap)
Dark-sky stays in the dry zone, with a telescope and a guide who knows the southern sky
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
Borrow a good telescope from a school or an astronomy enthusiast, find a guesthouse in the dry zone with no lights nearby, and run one free evening for its guests. Ask each guest what they would have paid, and ask the owner whether to make it a fixed night each week. A named price from the guests and the owner's yes are the proof.
- Who pays first
- Guesthouses in the dry zone that want a night-time activity to turn a one-night stop into two, and the guests who book it.
- What leaves today
- The dry zone's dark sky is a resource visitors never see, because they arrive, tour by day and leave before night falls.
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 18 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.