Safe Adventure – A Platform to Uplift the Adventure Tourism Industry in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Adventure tourism (AT) is an emerging sector in the tourism industry. AT is a leisure activity which includes exploration and physical activities in a remote area with a small risk. There are low-risk activities such as hiking and high-risk activities such as white water rafting but participants are not recognising the risk of these activities as risk is one of the major factors that motivates adventurous people to travel. Also when it comes to Sri Lanka (SL), tourism is one of the main source of income generator. Even though small tourism enterprises accounts for 75% of the tourism industry in SL, most of the adventure gear vendors (AGV) are still managing their business with paperwork and legacy systems. Therefore, it’ll lead to inefficiencies and inaccuracies. The aim of this project is to analyse the safety issues of adventure travellers, difficulties face by vendors and to design and develop an information system. To achieve this goal, I’m planning to design a web platform where I can educate and build confidence of traveller’s journey and also to bridge the gap between AGV and travellers by providing professional, accurate solution to promote low profile AT business and boom with high success. Techniques such as literature review, online questionnaires and interviews were used to validate the identified problem and to collect necessary data to successfully identify the requirements. It was identified that in an adventure, risk comes from human element, the environment and equipment. Safety risk, lack of knowledge on gear and environment, lack of guidance and cooperation to manage gear rentals for AGV industry were found as the main problems in this domain. The solution was design and developed according to the finalised requirements and it was evaluated by non-experts, domain experts to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the overall project.