Starter Kit. Idea 431 of 500. Cluster 22
Luggage-forwarding for tourists, so they can walk the hills and meet their bags at the coast
The mechanism, from the book
The village cannot get a box to the container port. The gap is small firms, not big ones.
The first step
Talk to the owners of the guesthouses at both ends of one popular walking route in the hills and ask how their walking guests handle their bags now. Offer to move bags by road between them, with a fixed price per bag and a receipt at both ends, and ask each owner to mention it at booking. The proof is the first paid bags delivered, and a guest review that mentions it.
- Who pays first
- Walkers who want to cross the hills on foot but carry heavy luggage, and gladly pay per bag to walk light and find it waiting.
- What leaves today
- Walkers who cannot shed their bags take a car instead and spend less on the way; forwarding turns the walk itself into a product the island sells.
Ask first
- Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority. Ask whether a bag-forwarding service for walkers can be registered as a tourist service.
- Department of the Registrar of Companies. Ask how to register the business before you carry visitors' bags for money.
Check before you spend
Confirm insurance that covers bags lost or damaged on the road, a written receipt for every bag, and agreement from the guesthouses at both ends.
Find out these three numbers
- How many walkers a week use the route in the busy season?
- What would a walker pay to have one bag moved?
- What does one road trip between the two ends cost you?
A comparison from the book
Sigiriya. Chapter Five
"It is to give somebody a reason not to leave tomorrow."
Take the heavy bag away and a walker can stay on the hills for more nights.
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.