Idea 8 of 500. Cluster 1: Stay longer (the $2.4 billion gap)
Budget lodging built to the same standard of welcome as the expensive tier
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
Stay one night in three cheap guesthouses in the same town and write down, room by room, what made you feel welcome and what did not. Take the list to the best-run of the three and offer to fix the ten cheapest failings, clean towels, a map, a proper breakfast, a reply within the hour, for a small fee. A yes, and better reviews within a month, prove the service.
- Who pays first
- Owners of small budget guesthouses who watch backpackers leave after one night and want them to stay 3 nights or more.
- What leaves today
- Budget travellers have the most time to spend; a poor first night sends them, and their weeks of spending, onward sooner.
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 8 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.