Starter Kit. Idea 19 of 500. Cluster 1
Wedding-week villas: the ceremony, the guests and the honeymoon in one place
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.
The first step
Write to 10 wedding planners in Britain, Europe and among Sri Lankans abroad who already plan weddings back home, with a one-page offer: one villa for the ceremony, the guests' rooms and the honeymoon week in the same place. Ask each what their couples usually spend on a wedding abroad. Two planners asking for dates, or naming a budget, are your proof.
- Who pays first
- Couples marrying abroad, often with a Sri Lankan partner, who want one place for the wedding, the guests and the honeymoon.
- What leaves today
- A destination wedding brings dozens of guests for a week; split across towns or sent elsewhere, most of that spending goes with it.
Ask first
- Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority. Ask how a villa hosting weddings and their guests registers as tourist accommodation.
- the local council (Municipal Council, Urban Council or Pradeshiya Sabha). Ask what approval large events, music and catering at the villa need.
Check before you spend
That the villa can legally host events, what the health officer requires for catering, and what the couple's own country requires for the marriage to count.
Find out these three numbers
- What do couples abroad pay for a week-long destination wedding?
- How many guests can the villa sleep and seat?
- Which wedding planners abroad would send couples to you?
A comparison from the book
Sigiriya. Chapter Five
"It is to give somebody a reason not to leave tomorrow."
A wedding fills a house for a week, which is exactly the stay the book wants.
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.