Starter Kit. Idea 7 of 500. Cluster 1
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.
The 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.
Ask first
- Department of Archaeology. Ask whether this building is protected and which repairs need their approval.
- Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority. Ask how a private villa registers to take paying guests.
Check before you spend
That the title is clear, whether the building is listed as protected, and what the structure needs before guests can safely sleep in it.
Find out these three numbers
- What does a private villa of this size earn per night nearby?
- What will the roof, wiring and plumbing cost to restore?
- How many weeks a year could the whole house be let?
A comparison from the book
Singapore. Chapter Five
"It had learned, from one bad year, that its heritage was revenue."
An old building restored and lived in earns more than one pulled down.
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.