Starter Kit. Idea 246 of 500. Cluster 12
Gem tourism packages combining Ratnapura, a cutting workshop and a jeweller in Colombo
The mechanism, from the book
The sapphire is mined here and cut here, and its value is certified in Basel and turned into money in Geneva. Every step of that chain can be built at home, and the first one is the piece of paper.
The first step
Line up a licensed dealer in Ratnapura, a cutting workshop and a jeweller in Colombo, asking whether each would host a small group for 2 hours at a set fee per head. Put the 3 stops together as one day with transport and lunch, write it on one page with a price, and offer it to 3 hotels. The proof is 3 yeses and one booking.
- Who pays first
- A hotel guest interested in jewellery who would pay for a planned day that follows a stone from the ground to the setting.
- What leaves today
- Visitors see one gem shop and no process, so the story that would sell the stone, and the day's spending, never comes together.
Ask first
- Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority. Ask whether a gem tour package must be sold through a registered operator.
- National Gem and Jewellery Authority. Ask how to confirm each dealer and jeweller on the tour is licensed.
Check before you spend
Whether each host agrees to a fee per head in writing, what insurance covers the group, and how buyers get a report on any stone.
Find out these three numbers
- What would a visitor pay for the full day?
- How many groups a week can the cutting workshop host?
- What share of sales on the day would hosts expect?
A comparison from the book
Sri Lanka House. Chapter Seventeen
"Gem cutting. Cinnamon peeling. Handloom weaving. Mask carving."
Show the cutting in front of people, and the stone becomes the one they watched being made.
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.