KERALA RISING · FROM EXPORTING PEOPLE TO EXPORTING IDEAS Its quieter failure is capture by the alreadyprominent: a score that simply confirms the resorts everyone already knew, while the small homestay and the north-Kerala corridor stay invisible. The mitigation is that the score measures experience rather than size or marketing spend, and that the distributional metric. Whether overlooked corridors climb, is tracked explicitly. If after several seasons the same established operators always top the rankings and nothing emerges from the periphery, the program has not delivered the distributional benefit it promises, and the design needs revisiting. MAKING THE EXPERIENCE MATCH THE BROCHURE Kerala already markets itself superbly; the gap is between the marketing and the doorway. Tourism Excellence closes that gap by making hospitality something operators are seen doing well and compete to do better, and because the sector is so large and the operators so motivated, it is the program most able to pay not only for itself but for others. 162