Starter Kit. Idea 316 of 500. Cluster 15
App development for the hundred tourism businesses in this list, on a revenue share
The mechanism, from the book
The proof exists in Malabe. What is missing is a thousand small versions of it.
The first step
Pick one idea from this list that already runs as a small tourism business, such as a whale-watching boat or a fish-market tour, and build its booking page for free on a revenue share. Measure bookings for a month against the month before. If the owner earns more, their numbers are your pitch to the next 10 businesses.
- Who pays first
- A small tourism operator who cannot pay upfront for software but will share a slice of each booking it brings in.
- What leaves today
- Small tourism businesses sell through foreign booking platforms that take a commission, or do not sell online at all.
Ask first
- Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority. Ask which tourism businesses must be registered before they take bookings online.
- Department of the Registrar of Companies. Ask which registration suits a firm paid by a share of bookings.
Check before you spend
A written revenue-share agreement with each owner, that each business is properly registered to sell to visitors, and how payments and refunds flow.
Find out these three numbers
- How many bookings did the business take in the month before?
- What share of each booking will the owner accept?
- What do booking websites charge the same owner now?
A comparison from the book
Who starts which. Appendix
"Every one of them is a service to the other clusters"
A booking page for another idea's owner is a business that grows as the rest of the list grows.
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.