The Wilpattu National Park is finally getting a touch of tech via brand new mobile app. Spanning across Anuradhapura and Puttalam districts, the park claims an area of about 131,656 hectares and is one of Sri Lanka’s prime travel offerings. The mobile app comes as a means of improving accessibility and visibility for the national park.
Developed by “We Are Designers,” the Wilpattu National Park app is part of a €8 million German project headed by GIZ. The app is equipped with two primary features, a self-guided tour and a virtual tour. As the name implies, the self-guided tour allows visitors to navigate the park conveniently via its in-app map. Further, this map is available offline as a downloaded content, which means data signal concerns inside the park shouldn’t be a problem.
A virtual Wilpattu experience
The virtual tour is basically a 360-degree panorama shots of 13 spots within Wilpattu. While it’s not necessarily on the level of Google Street view, the virtual tour does offer a glimpse of what visitors can expect to see at the park.
Apart from the tours, the Wilpattu app little encyclopaedic entries on different points of interest at the park ranging from the Palace of Kuveni to the Watathaluwa Villu. The app also includes a rating feature that allows visitors to give feedback on their experience.
As per the German Embassy in Colombo, its €8 million project is looking to improve Wilpattu National Park’s “attractiveness and accessibility” via state-of-the-art visitors centres, new bridges, and warden facilities among others. An official app for the park is one of the latest additions of the GIZ-headed project, in collaboration with Sri Lanka’s Department of Wildlife Conservation (DWC)
“This app is a game changer. I will promote tourism in the Wilpattu National Park amongst the German speaking community and dedicate to bring more and more tourists from Germany,” mentions German Ambassador to Sri Lanka Holger Seubert during the app’s official launch.
Wilpattu National Park app is now available for download via Google Play Store and Apple App Store.
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