Starter Kit. Idea 482 of 500. Cluster 26
Negombo: the first and last evening of every visit, 15 minutes from the airport, with the fleet coming in to the beach, the churches and the lagoon sold as the island's welcome and its send-off
The mechanism, from the book
Every city has one thing it could be known for, and most are not yet known for it.
The first step
Ask two hotels in Negombo how many guests spend their first or last night there, and what those guests do with the evening. Design one evening for them: the fleet coming in to the beach, the churches and the lagoon, with a guide and a meal. Run it at a trial price. The proof is the hotels booking it for their guests every week.
- Who pays first
- A visitor spending the first or last night near the airport, who has one evening and wants it to count.
- What leaves today
- Visitors spend their first and last night near the airport in a hotel room; an evening worth having makes the welcome and the goodbye earn.
Ask first
- Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority. Ask whether a guided evening for hotel guests must register as a tourist service.
- Department of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources. Ask whether visitors may watch at the landing and go out on the lagoon by boat.
Check before you spend
Confirm the hotels' agreement, the fishermen's consent to visitors at the landing, permission for any boat on the lagoon, and life jackets and insurance.
Find out these three numbers
- How many hotel guests arrive or leave each week?
- What would a guest pay for one guided evening?
- At what time does the fleet come in, season by season?
A comparison from the book
The list. Chapter Fourteen
"do in the evening, experiences rather than sights"
Give visitors something to do on the evenings that are usually wasted.
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.