Idea 9 of 500. Cluster 1: Stay longer (the $2.4 billion gap)
Villa management services for absentee owners
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
Call 10 owners of holiday villas who live abroad or in Colombo, found through estate agents and friends abroad, and ask one question: what goes wrong when you are not there. Write down the three answers that repeat, then offer the first owner a month of management, bookings, cleaning, repairs and a monthly photo report, at a fixed fee. One signed month is the proof.
- Who pays first
- A villa owner living abroad whose house sits empty or badly run, and who would rather pay a fee than keep losing bookings.
- What leaves today
- Villas owned from abroad sit empty for weeks at a time; local management fills the nights and keeps the fees on the island.
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 9 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.