TRAVEL SMART: Your Ultimate Travel Companion

“Insights for travel with beautifully designed maps.”

What it is about

Maps can be useful for travel information but are missing on most websites for travel. This project aimed to develop a Web page providing essential travel information focusing on two countries of the 14th intake of the Master’s Degree in Cartography - Ecuador and Ghana. The travel tips were grouped according to the topological regions of each country. Themes covered included health, security, currency, culture, packing, transportation, attractions, connectivity, and language. The target audience for this project comprise healthy adult travelers. In all, the Web page focuses on delivering summarized insights while serving as a user-friendly and informative resource for travelers.

How we built it

The Web page consists of custom maps, information on the various themes and links to specific Web pages where more information on a particular topic could be obtained. We added some complementary images to give it an attractive layout. Map data were obtained as shapefiles from Instituto Geográfico Militar and Natural Earth Dataset. The custom maps were designed with a combination of QGIS 3.26 and GIMP 2.10.38. Information on the tips were from various sites including country specific Ministry of Tourism pages, travel pages and various health advisory pages for travelers. Complementary images used were publicly licensed images from pexels.com. The Web page was designed with WordPress.

Challenges we ran into

A major problem was making artistic map designs which show a realistic view of the various topological regions of Ghana and Ecuador. Another problem was the Web page design. These problems required that we learnt new skills in general and website design.

What we're proud of

We like that our project shows how travel sites can be designed with the inclusion of interesting looking maps. We are proud of how much we have learnt and achieved with this project.

What we learned

We learnt new skills for image manipulation in GIMP. Other areas of learning were teamwork and the effective communication of ideas. From this project we gained practical insight into the entire process of project conceptualization, design, planning, execution and presentation. Finally, we learnt a lot about the two countries - Ghana and Ecuador, whose maps we designed.

What's next

In the future, the design of the maps could be improved to provide an interactive design. The Web page architecture could also be customized to provide the user with more functionality. Finally, information on more countries around the world could be added for a wider audience.

Sources

Lonely Planet | Travel Guides & Travel Information. (n.d.). Lonely Planet. Retrieved 30 January 2025, from https://www.lonelyplanet.com
Team, H. T. H. (n.d.). Ecuador—Fit for Travel. Retrieved 30 January 2025, from https://www.fitfortravel.nhs.uk/destinations/south-america-antarctica/ecuadr
Students
Jennyfer Samaniego and Yvonne Darko

14th intake
Supervisor
Juliane Cron, M.Sc.
Keywords
maps, travel tips, tourism
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