Winners- Tertiary Category- Tourism Start-Up Competition 2026 - "AI-Driven Innovation for the Future of Tourism"
The Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority (SLTDA), in celebration of World Tourism Day 2026, organized the Tourism Start-Up Competition 2026 under the theme "AI-Driven Innovation for the Future of Tourism”. The event was held on 25th September 2026, at Taj Samudra Hotel, Colombo, in conjunction with the celebration of World Tourism Day 2026.
The competition is designed to identify, encourage, and promote innovative ideas and start-up solutions that leverage Artificial Intelligence (AI) and digital technologies to address current and emerging challenges within the tourism sector. The initiative aligns with the global focus on digital transformation and the increasing role of AI in enhancing visitor experiences, improving operational efficiency, and supporting sustainable tourism development.
Recognizing the creativity, technical expertise, and entrepreneurial potential of university students, the participants were encouraged to develop innovative solutions. The competition provided an excellent opportunity for students to showcase their innovative capabilities, gain exposure to industry stakeholders, investors, and tourism professionals, and contribute to the digital transformation of Sri Lanka's tourism sector. Selected finalists were invited to present their concepts before an expert evaluation panel.
Dep. of CSE Congratulate Mr. T. Praveen Nawarathna, Mr. D. I. R. Tharusha Perera, Mr.Bimsara udurawana, Mr. Janith mahamana and Mr. Maleesha Kumarasinghe from Batch23-CSE for awarding as Winners of the Tertiary Category.
There project “TourSL” is a full-stack tour planning platform built for Sri Lanka. It allows tourists to plan multi-day itineraries, adding stops, activities, and routes between destinations, while guides can create and publish tour packages for tourists to book. The platform also contains a recommendation engine for tourists, an itinerary optimization technology powered by clustering and utilizes the concept of travelling salesman problem, and a tourism forecasting engine. The platform integrates Google Places and Google Routes APIs for place discovery and route calculation, with intelligent caching to minimize API costs.