Starter Kit. Idea 461 of 500. Cluster 24
Mystery-shopping services that sell the report to the business and publish the score
The mechanism, from the book
The one thing. A country where people do not expect the rules to hold cannot build anything else, and proof can be manufactured by private people, one published record at a time.
The first step
Visit five restaurants or hotels in one town as an ordinary customer, score each on the same 10 points from the welcome to the bill, and write each a one-page report. Take the reports to the owners and offer the next visit for a fee, making clear the scores will be published. The proof is an owner who pays, knowing the score goes public.
- Who pays first
- An owner who knows the service slips when they are away, and pays for the report because a published good score is advertising.
- What leaves today
- Service that nobody measures cannot be sold at a premium; a published score is proof that a business earns its price.
Ask first
- Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority. Ask whether hotels and restaurants they register would welcome an independent score.
- Department of the Registrar of Companies. Ask how to register a mystery-shopping business that sells reports.
Check before you spend
Confirm that each business agrees in writing before any score is published, that the same points are used for every visit, and that no staff member is named.
Find out these three numbers
- What would an owner pay for a private report?
- How many visits a month does one shopper manage?
- Which guests would read a published score before booking?
A comparison from the book
Japan. Chapter Eleven
"a national prize that a factory in Biyagama or a guesthouse in Ella would actually want to win"
A score worth winning makes owners improve before anyone tells them to.
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.