Negombo: the fish market and the canals as Sri Lanka's Venice, done before the residents leave

A first step

Get up before dawn and go to the fish market, then find one boatman on the canals willing to take visitors out. Offer a 3-hour morning tour, market then canal, to the front desks of 5 beach hotels in the town at a fixed price, with a commission for the hotel. Bookings in the first fortnight tell you whether visitors will pay for the town beyond the beach.

Who pays first

A beach-hotel guest with one spare morning, who wants to see a working fish market and the canals with someone who knows them.

What leaves today

Visitors sleep in Negombo on their first or last night and leave without spending on the town's own market or its waterways.

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. SeventeenOne Building
  One building, and what a city could be known for

More from cluster 26

• 476Colombo: a night market on the Galle Face green run to a standard, every weekend
• 477Colombo: the Pettah as a managed market street, cleaned, lit and sold to visitors as the best bazaar in Asia
• 478Kandy: the lake promenade with cafés and evening performances, not only the temple
• 479Galle: a residents' company that owns the Fort's tourist lets and keeps the residents in
• 480Jaffna: a culinary capital, the crab and the palmyrah sold as a cuisine
• 481Trincomalee: the harbour as a sailing and diving centre for the Bay of Bengal

All 10 ideas in this cluster