Starter Kit. Idea 20 of 500. Cluster 1
A guesthouse rating scheme run by the guesthouses themselves, with published inspections
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
Gather five guesthouse owners in one town over tea and propose a simple thing: each inspects another's rooms against a one-page checklist, and the results are published. Write the checklist together at that meeting. If all five sign up and pay a small fee for the first round of inspections, the scheme has its founding members.
- Who pays first
- Well-run guesthouse owners who lose bookings to poorly run neighbours and want a published way to show they are better.
- What leaves today
- Without a trusted local standard, visitors rely on overseas review sites and book cautiously; a published inspection is proof the island owns.
Ask first
- Department of the Registrar of Companies. Ask how to register an association of guesthouses that publishes inspection results.
- Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority. Ask how a voluntary rating scheme could sit alongside their own registration.
Check before you spend
That members agree in writing to be inspected and published, who inspects and how they stay independent, and how disputes over a rating are settled.
Find out these three numbers
- How many guesthouses in one town would pay to join?
- What does one honest inspection cost in time and travel?
- Would travellers trust a rating run by the guesthouses themselves?
A comparison from the book
Sri Lanka House. Chapter Seventeen
"None of that is a value. All of it is checkable, which is the only property that matters."
Publish the rules and the results, so travellers can check the scheme for themselves.
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.