Starter Kit. Idea 491 of 500. Cluster 27
Trincomalee's Dutch fort and Koneswaram as one managed site, with a shop and a guide service
The mechanism, from the book
The land, the lagoons and the savings of families abroad are waiting. What comes first is the small business.
The first step
Walk both sites in one day with a notebook and time the route a visitor would take between the fort and the temple. Write a 2-hour guided tour covering both, check it with the temple's management, and offer it at a fixed price to guests at 3 local hotels. The count of paid tours in a month, and what visitors ask to buy afterwards, shapes the shop.
- Who pays first
- A visitor or pilgrim who arrives with no one to explain the site, and pays for a guide who knows its history and its customs.
- What leaves today
- Visitors see two great sites without explanation and leave without spending, so the guiding, the shop and the story earn nothing locally.
Ask first
- Department of Archaeology. Ask what guiding and a shop near the fort would need their permission for.
- Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority. Ask how guides for the two sites can be licensed.
Check before you spend
Confirm the temple management's agreement to the tour, permission for guides and any shop, and that the shop sells things made in the area.
Find out these three numbers
- What would a visitor pay for a guided two-hour tour?
- How many visitors see the fort and the temple each day?
- What could a shop by the sites sell that is made locally?
A comparison from the book
Sigiriya. Chapter Five
"And there is nothing to buy that is from there."
Give visitors a guide and something made nearby to buy, and the visit earns for the town.
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.