Sri Lanka Tourist Map Redesigned - 2022
Project Overview
The 2022 redesign of Sri Lanka Tourist Map represented a major evolution of the original tourism platform introduced in 2013. Designed and developed by Isura Wickramarachchi, the project combined a modern visual interface with an expanded tourism database while preserving the sophisticated travel-planning capabilities that distinguished the original application.
The platform was designed as a complete travel companion where visitors could discover attractions, hotels, travel agents, guides, and other essential services from a single website. Its intelligent planning tools enabled travellers to organise personalised tours while automatically generating practical travel itineraries based on their selected destinations.
Design & Structure
The redesigned website adopted a modern tourism-focused visual identity.
The interface combines white, yellow, blue, grey, and black with large panoramic photography of Sri Lanka, creating an attractive and professional appearance suitable for international travellers.
The homepage features:
- Full-width destination banner.
- Quick search.
- Category navigation.
- Featured accommodation.
- Attraction galleries.
- Hotel directory.
- Tourism statistics.
- Destination tabs.
- Responsive content blocks.
- Simplified navigation.
Compared with earlier versions, the redesign greatly improved readability, mobile compatibility, and content organisation while maintaining easy access to the platform's powerful planning tools.
Key Features
- Dynamic PHP/MySQL tourism database.
- Fully customised Google Maps API.
- Personal tour planner.
- Automatic itinerary generation.
- Saved attractions.
- Saved hotels.
- Nearby-place discovery.
- Hotel directory.
- Attraction directory.
- Tour guide directory.
- Travel agent directory.
- Essential services database.
- Tour cost estimation.
- User registration.
- Responsive interface.
- SEO-friendly architecture.
- Cross-browser compatibility.
Technical Highlights
- PHP/MySQL database-driven architecture.
- Custom-built Tourism Management System.
- Fully customised Google Maps API.
- Dynamic tourism database.
- Automated itinerary generation.
- User account management.
- Category-based filtering.
- Dynamic search engine.
- Interactive mapping.
- Responsive implementation.
- Performance optimisation.
- Cross-browser compatibility.
Significance
The 2022 redesign of Sri Lanka Tourist Map demonstrates Isura Wickramarachchi's continued innovation in developing intelligent tourism applications. Building upon the successful foundation established in 2013, the redesigned platform modernised both the user experience and the underlying tourism database while preserving its advanced travel-planning capabilities.
Unlike conventional tourism directories, the platform enables travellers to create personalised travel experiences by selecting attractions, hotels, and destinations they wish to visit. These locations can be saved to a personal account, displayed together on an interactive map, and automatically organised into practical travel itineraries based on preferred travel dates. This significantly simplifies the planning process for both local and international visitors.
Another distinctive feature is its fully customised Google Maps API integration, which allows users to visualise their complete journey, discover attractions and essential services near their accommodation, and obtain route guidance between destinations. By combining tourism information, accommodation listings, travel services, and intelligent mapping within a single platform, the application delivers a comprehensive travel-planning experience that extends far beyond a traditional tourism website.
With its extensive database of attractions, hotels, guides, travel agents, and essential visitor services, Sri Lanka Tourist Map stands as one of Isura Wickramarachchi's most technically advanced tourism projects, demonstrating his expertise in database-driven web development, geographic information systems, and custom Google Maps API integration. The platform anticipated many of the features now common in modern travel-planning applications, making it a pioneering solution in Sri Lanka's digital tourism landscape.
Isura Wickramarachchi is a Sri Lankan author, historical researcher, digital heritage innovator, and information technology professional with more than 25 years of experience in software development, web technologies, and digital publishing. His work is dedicated to preserving Sri Lanka's history through modern technology, making historical knowledge more accessible and engaging for future generations.
He is the author of Mahawansa Pradeepikawa, a groundbreaking 650-page, full-colour historical publication that presents the genealogies, portraits, and histories of nearly 200 Sri Lankan kings. The book is the result of almost ten years of research based on more than 300 historical sources and includes over 200 reconstructed royal portraits, more than 180 royal family trees, and an innovative QR code system that links readers to additional online historical content.
The significance of Mahawansa Pradeepikawa has received international recognition through its acceptance into the collections of renowned institutions, including the British Library, Harvard Library, and the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, demonstrating its value as a modern contribution to the preservation and study of Sri Lankan history.
In addition to his work as an author, Isura has made significant contributions to Sri Lanka's digital landscape as the Founder and Managing Director of isandi CREATIONS. Over the course of his career, he has designed and developed more than 400 websites and web-based applications for clients in Sri Lanka and overseas, specializing in PHP application development, database systems, user experience design, and large-scale information management solutions.
Among his most notable technological achievements is the development of the Sri Lanka Tourist Database Project, one of the country's earliest comprehensive digital tourism information systems. The project brought together thousands of tourist attractions, hotels, restaurants, banks, supermarkets, hospitals, transport services, and other visitor facilities into a single interactive platform. It featured a customized Google Maps integration that allowed users to save favourite destinations, automatically generate personalized travel itineraries, and discover nearby services based on their location. At a time when interactive tourism platforms were still emerging, the project demonstrated how geographic information systems and web technologies could be used to enhance travel planning and promote Sri Lanka's tourism industry.
He is also the creator of several long-term digital knowledge platforms, including films.lk, Sri Lanka's comprehensive Sinhala cinema database, mahawansaya.com, and sinhalasindu.lk, combining historical research, digital archiving, and modern web technologies into accessible online resources.
Beyond publishing and software development, Isura has led numerous educational and community service initiatives focused on knowledge sharing, digital literacy, and heritage preservation. His work reflects a vision of using technology not only to solve practical problems but also to preserve culture, inspire future generations, and strengthen national identity through education and innovation.
සංවාදයට එක්වන්න.