Idea 3 of 500. Cluster 1: Stay longer (the $2.4 billion gap)
Glamping with proper service, at sites with none
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
Ask the owner of a beautiful site with no accommodation, a riverbank or the edge of an estate, whether you can pitch two tents for one trial weekend on a revenue share. Hire the tents, cook proper meals, and sell the weekend to Colombo families and resident expatriates through their school and workplace networks. Full bookings, and guests asking to come back, are the proof.
- Who pays first
- Colombo families and resident expatriates who want a weekend outdoors without roughing it and will pay for someone else to handle the meals.
- What leaves today
- Beautiful sites with no bed turn every visit into a day trip; an overnight with real service keeps the spending at the site.
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
- 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
- 7Restored colonial estates as private villas
Idea 3 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.