GuideSL

Booking a guide in Sri Lanka has historically meant a WhatsApp number passed between friends. That works until something goes wrong, and then neither side has any recourse.

GuideSL is the infrastructure that makes the transaction safe for both parties. Guides apply and are verified — NIC checks, licence status, a review of their application by an administrator before they can appear. Travellers plan a tour, request a guide, pay through PayHere, and only then does the guide receive contact details.

Money is the part that needs the most care. Payment is captured up front, the platform's commission is held, and payouts to guides are released on a schedule with a reconciliation view for the admin. Disputes have their own workflow rather than becoming an email thread.

The operations side is as substantial as the public site: guide applications, active tours, payments and reconciliation, payouts, reviews awaiting moderation, disputes, support, tourism sites, and a control view for individual tour requests. That console is what makes the platform operable by a person rather than by a developer with database access.

Real-time messaging runs through Ably so a traveller and a guide can talk before and during a tour. The site is multi-language via next-intl, since the audience is not primarily English-first, and tourism sites are shown on maps built with MapLibre. Images pass through a watermarking pipeline on the server before they are served.