Model the Island as Data

Lesson 1 of 10 · Tourism Tech · built from Nora Travels, Nora Labs, Mahesh Travellers and my hospitality sites

A tourism site is a catalogue first and a website second. If the places, activities and routes are well-structured data, every page — cards, detail pages, search, maps — falls out of it. The Nora Travels portal keeps 100% of its content in JSON under /data/ and reads it through typed getters.

Example — the Activity schema

export interface Activity {
  id: string;
  slug: string;
  title: string;
  tagline: string;
  category: string;        // e.g. "Safari & Wildlife"
  region: string;          // e.g. "Sigiriya & Cultural Triangle"
  duration: string;
  difficulty: string;
  bestSeason: string;
  priceRange: string;      // "$" … "$$$$"
  rating: number;
  reviewsCount: number;
  heroImage: string;
  highlights: string[];
  overview: string;
  practicalTips: string[];
  coordinates: { lat: number; lng: number };
  relatedWikiSlug?: string;
  tags: string[];
}

Example — typed getters

import activitiesData from '@/data/activities.json';

export function getAllActivities(): Activity[] {
  return activitiesData as unknown as Activity[];
}

export function getActivityBySlug(slug: string): Activity | undefined {
  return (activitiesData as unknown as Activity[]).find((a) => a.slug === slug);
}

Why this shape works

• slug becomes the URL; id stays stable even if the title changes.
• coordinates are stored once and reused by maps, "nearby" lists and route planning.
• relatedWikiSlug links a bookable activity to the encyclopedia article that explains it — commerce and culture side by side.
• The same pattern covers Destination (province, climate, best time, elevation, key attractions), Itinerary (route + days) and WikiArticle (infobox, sections, references).

Exercise

Add a Destination for Ella with province, climate, bestTime, elevation and three keyAttractions. Which fields would a map need, and which would a detail page need?

Keep going: ← Course overview · Lesson 2 →