Starter Kit. Idea 8 of 500. Cluster 1
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.
The 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.
Ask first
- Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority. Ask which registration fits a small budget guesthouse and what standard they check.
- the area Medical Officer of Health. Ask what hygiene standard they expect for shared bathrooms and a small kitchen.
Check before you spend
That the rooms meet the guesthouse registration standard, that fire exits and wiring are safe, and what the council requires for a change of use.
Find out these three numbers
- What do budget travellers pay per night in this town today?
- How cheaply can one clean, comfortable room be fitted out?
- Which complaints appear most often in reviews of cheap rooms here?
A comparison from the book
Sigiriya. Chapter Five
"somewhere decent to stay at whatever price they can afford"
The cheap end deserves the same welcome as the expensive one, and guests notice.
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.