Starter Kit. Idea 82 of 500. Cluster 4
Horse and carriage village tours
The mechanism, from the book
An app that tells people what is happening tonight converts a day visit into a 2-night stay.
The first step
Find a family with a horse and carriage in a village near a heritage site, and ask whether they would take visitors on an hour's circuit. Agree a fee and a route. Run it for two guests from the nearest guesthouse and ask what they would pay. A second booking from that guesthouse is the proof.
- Who pays first
- Families and slower travellers who want to see village life at walking pace, and the guesthouses that sell it to them.
- What leaves today
- Visitors pass villages by car without stopping; a slow tour pays the village for its own daily life.
Ask first
- the Divisional Secretariat. Ask whether a carriage service on village roads needs any local permission.
- Department of Motor Traffic. Ask whether a horse-drawn carriage needs registration to carry paying passengers.
Check before you spend
That the horses are well kept and checked by a vet, that the route is safe, and what insurance covers passengers.
Find out these three numbers
- What will visitors pay for a carriage ride through villages?
- What does keeping one horse cost each month?
- How many rides a day can one horse do without strain?
A comparison from the book
Zermatt. Chapter Five
"horse-drawn carriage, and some of the carriages belonged to a local family"
A family with carriages built Zermatt's taxis; start small and grow with the village.
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.