Starter Kit. Idea 495 of 500. Cluster 27
Guesthouses on the islands off Jaffna (Delft and Nainativu), with the boat, the meals and a guide in one booking
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
Visit Delft and Nainativu and ask 3 families on each whether they would host visitors in a spare room, cook a meal and walk them round. Agree a price with a boatman for the crossing, put the boat, the meals, the room and a guide into one booking, and offer it to 2 guesthouses in Jaffna for their guests. Guests who stay the night rather than return on the same boat are the proof.
- Who pays first
- A visitor in Jaffna who wants to see the islands but does not want to arrange the boat, the meals and the stay separately.
- What leaves today
- Visitors cross for a few hours and return the same day, so the money for a night and a meal is spent back in Jaffna instead.
Ask first
- Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority. Ask how a small guesthouse on the islands registers to take visitors.
- the Divisional Secretariat. Ask who runs the boats to the islands and how visitors' places are booked.
Check before you spend
That the guesthouse is registered, that the boat is licensed and carries a life jacket for every passenger, and what happens when the sea stops the boat.
Find out these three numbers
- What would a visitor pay for a night, the boat and meals together?
- How many visitors go to the islands only for the day now?
- How many rooms could island families offer?
A comparison from the book
Sigiriya's evenings. Chapter Five
"cheapest way to turn a day visit into a 2-night stay."
Turn the day trip into a night, and the island families earn from the stay, not only the boat.
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.