Colombia’s Cartagena Launches Website to Help Tourists Plan Their Trip

Cartagena de Indias, Colombia’s most visited city in the Caribbean, recently rolled out a new online travel helper with the launch of VisitCartagena.com.co, a website designed to connect visitors with the city’s tourism and cultural offer in one spot.

The website grew out of Conecta Cartagena, a project that mixed technology and citizen input to improve how tourists explore the city and how local providers show their services.

Trip planning can start as fun and end as chaos, too many tabs, mixed prices, and random tips. A single, organized portal can make choices easier, especially for people who want a clear plan before landing.

A portal built by local tech to help you plan your trip to Cartagena, Colombia

Conecta Cartagena kicked off with a hackathon where more than 40 tech companies joined to build solutions, and it ended with 10 selected projects that helped shape the final platform.

The project also included tech adoption sessions and community meetings, bringing tourism workers and residents into the process so the tool would feel practical, not distant or “only for experts.”

At the launch, Mayor Dumek Turbay Paz presented the portal as a step toward modernizing the destination, using technology to link tourism providers with local, national, and international visitors.

When institutions team up

The platform was launched through joint work by the Chamber of Commerce of Cartagena, MinTIC, the Cartagena city administration through the Tourism Secretariat, and the Governorate of Bolivar.

That kind of teamwork is important in tourism because visitors do not experience a city in “separate departments.” They experience transport, service, safety, and trust all at once, so coordination can improve the full trip.

Business leaders also framed the launch as a strong public-private effort, highlighting that the platform includes artificial intelligence tools meant to learn visitor preferences and help the destination prepare for what travelers want.

What visitors find inside the VisitCartagena platform

VisitCartagena.com.co was presented as a solution for common visitor needs, where to eat, where to sleep, what to do, what to see, and how much to pay, all in one digital place.

Clear guidance on prices and options is not only about saving money. It helps visitors avoid surprises, plan day by day, and feel confident saying yes to tours, museums, or restaurants that fit their budget.

The launch event took place at the Salon Barahona in the Cartagena Convention Center, with local authorities, tourism representatives, and business leaders gathering to present the platform and its purpose.

The database behind the map

Before the launch, the project gathered more than 1,500 surveys and held meetings with key tourism and commerce actors, using that input to understand needs and build the database that feeds the platform.

A tourism portal is only as good as its listings. If addresses, schedules, and prices are outdated, travelers get frustrated fast, and local businesses lose trust. A solid database turns “nice idea” into something people return to.

This behind-the-scenes work also helps smaller providers. When the information is organized and searchable, a family-run tour or a neighborhood restaurant can appear next to bigger brands, giving visitors more choices and spreading spending across the city.

CATA, AI, and the VisitCartagena platform’s digital previews

The platform includes a chatbot called CATA, designed to guide visitors and recommend must-see places during a trip to Cartagena.

At the launch, organizers also pointed to artificial intelligence as a way to understand visitors’ likes over time, which could help shape better offers and planning as long as the data is handled responsibly.

The event featured digital experiences such as virtual and augmented reality tied to platform functions for tourists and merchants, showing how tech can make trip ideas feel more real before a visitor books anything.

The platform launched as a first beta version and was expected to keep improving with feedback from visitors, citizens, and merchants, so it can stay useful as travel habits change.

With VisitCartagena.com.co now live, Cartagena reinforces its push for innovation and its goal of becoming a more competitive tourism destination in the region, supported by a single official-style digital doorway for visitors.