Idea 7 of 500. Cluster 1: Stay longer (the $2.4 billion gap)
Restored colonial estates as private villas
The mechanism, from the book
If Sri Lanka earned what the Maldives earns per visitor, the visitors it already has would bring in $2.4 billion a year more.
Every idea in cluster 1 uses this mechanism.
A first step
List five colonial-era bungalows or estate houses you can reach, then knock on the door of the one in the best condition and ask the owner whether they would let it whole, fully staffed, for a trial week. Agree a price, then offer that week to a luxury travel adviser in London or Zurich by email with photographs. A signed hold on the dates is the proof.
- Who pays first
- Luxury travel advisers whose clients want a whole house with staff and history, and will pay a villa price for a week of it.
- What leaves today
- Grand old houses stand underused while high-spending visitors book villas on other islands; a restored estate keeps a week's premium here.
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. FiveThe Most Photographed Rock in the World
The stay shortened by nearly a quarter, and the $2.4 billion gap
More from cluster 1
- 1Boutique eco-lodges with heritage views
- 2Luxury treehouse stays in forest margins
- 3Glamping with proper service, at sites with none
- 4Heritage homestays in family houses
- 5Floating cabanas on the ancient reservoirs
- 6Forest holiday villages on the Center Parcs model: lodges among the trees, a covered pool, bikes and a lake, so a family stays a week, not a night
Idea 7 of the 500 in the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? Every one can be started by one person, one family or one small firm.