Se Litauen: Lithuania travel portal for Swedish visitors

Context

The portal introduces Lithuania to Swedish travellers. It is not a travel agency website or a government project. It is a content portal that presents Lithuanian tourism, accommodation and leisure providers in one place.

The audience shapes a lot here. A Swede planning a trip to the Baltics knows little about Lithuania and is choosing between three neighbouring countries. So the portal first has to explain why it is worth coming, and only then offer specific services.

What needed solving

The content had to work on two levels. The introductory level covers nature, culture and history, plus practical information before the trip. The specific level covers cities, places to visit, accommodation and recommendations.

The second question was languages. The main language is Swedish, but the portal also runs in English and Lithuanian, because the service providers who want to become partners are Lithuanian.

Content also keeps growing, so the structure had to stay orderly even after several hundred entries.

How the portal is structured

The portal is custom built with Laravel, without an off-the-shelf content management template. A large volume of content in several languages needs a clean data structure, which a template with plugins does not provide.

Content is divided into thematic sections: about Lithuania, preparing for the trip, nature, culture and history. City pages work separately: Vilnius, Kaunas, Trakai, Neringa, Birštonas and Anykščiai. The same place can be assigned to both a topic and a city, so readers find it by either route.

The recommendations section offers ready-made routes and places. For a traveller who knows little about the country, a ready route is more useful than a list of sights.

The invitation to become a partner is aimed at Lithuanian service providers and is presented separately from the main content, so it does not get in the way of Swedish readers.

Technical decisions

Custom build instead of a template. A portal with several languages, growing content and two ways of organising it would quickly outgrow a standard content management system.

Two ways of organising the same content. Each place is assigned to both a topic and a city. A reader can start from "what to do in Vilnius" or from "what is Lithuanian nature like".

Three languages for different audiences. Swedish is for the traveller, Lithuanian for the prospective partner. Texts are written separately for each audience rather than translated word for word.