Starter Kit. Idea 494 of 500. Cluster 27
Mannar's wind and salt as businesses: the pans, the kites, the birds
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
Spend a windy weekend on the Mannar coast with 2 kites and a notebook. Ask the salt-pan workers whether visitors could walk the pans and buy salt direct, and ask the guesthouses whether their guests come for the birds. Then offer a half-day of salt pans, birds and kites to one guesthouse's guests at a set price. Paid bookings tell you which of the three sells.
- Who pays first
- A birdwatcher or kite flyer visiting Mannar who wants a local guide to the pans, the birds and the best wind, and pays for a half-day.
- What leaves today
- Mannar's wind, salt and birds go unsold to visitors, and the salt leaves as a bulk commodity with no story or name attached.
Ask first
- Department of Wildlife Conservation. Ask where visitors may walk to see the birds without harm.
- Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority. Ask how a guided salt-pan and bird tour can be registered.
Check before you spend
Confirm permission from whoever owns the salt pans for visitors to walk them, wildlife rules for bird areas, and insurance for guests.
Find out these three numbers
- What would a visitor pay for a pans and birds tour?
- How many guests come to the coast for the birds?
- What price could salt sold direct to visitors fetch?
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.