Ceylon Circuit / About

A studio, not an agency

Fourteen trip designers, one small island.

Ceylon Circuit was started in 2014 above a tea shop in Kandy by two friends who kept being asked to plan other people's holidays. It's still small on purpose.

Today, a team of fourteen — trip designers, naturalists, drivers and one tireless office dog — quietly plan around 300 itineraries a year. Here's who we are, how we work, and why we haven't hired a sales team.

The long version

A studio built around the question "how do you actually travel?"

Sri Lanka is small — three hundred kilometres end to end — but it keeps more than its share of secrets. Our founders Priyanka and Dinuka grew up two provinces apart and spent a decade trading the same frustration: the island was being sold as a checklist. Eight stops in ten days, everyone on the same bus, no one in on the joke.

We built Ceylon Circuit as a counterweight. A studio that treats an itinerary like a piece of design. No fixed departures, no nameless call centres, no kickbacks from the gem shops. Just fourteen people who live here, plan here, and answer their own email.

"Our best itineraries are forty percent less crowded and about twice as specific as what you'll find on a comparison site. That's the whole trick."

— Priyanka Weerakoon, Co-founder

We're licensed by the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority, members of PATA and the ATTA, fully insured and — the part we're proudest of — one of 23 B Corp-certified travel studios in South Asia. None of which matters if the trip isn't any good. So let's start there instead.

What we hold ourselves to

Five operating principles
we won't quietly drop.

01 · Local first

Written in Kandy, not Bangalore.

Every itinerary is drafted by a Sri Lankan trip designer, run past a local naturalist or cultural guide, and reviewed before it's sent. No template farms, no outsourced desks.

02 · Budget honest

Same care, every price point.

A $2,400 backpacker loop gets the same designer, the same eight-hour reply, and the same revision rounds as a $40,000 private month. The difference is comfort, not craft.

03 · No kickback economy

We don't earn on the stops we make.

Ceylon Circuit does not take commissions from gem shops, batik factories or tea estates. If we recommend a place, it's because we've eaten there — not because it bought us lunch.

04 · Quietly green

Measured, not marketed.

We offset every trip, channel 1% of revenue to the Wilpattu Buffer Fund, and quietly cap the number of vehicles we'll put into any one park on any one morning.

05 · Answer your own email

The person who plans, replies.

The trip designer you write to first is the one who writes your itinerary, troubleshoots at 2am, and calls you when the floods close a road. No handoffs, no tiered desks.

06 · Don't oversell the island

We'll talk you out of things.

If you've got a week, we won't push you for ten days. If the seas are wrong in August, we'll say so. Our job is a good trip — not a big one.

Credentials

The boring paperwork,
in plain language.

Licence · 04/2014

SLTDA Licensed Tour Operator

Registered and bonded with the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority. Licence No. DMC/14-0187, renewed annually.

Financial protection

Fully insured, escrow-held deposits

Your deposit sits in a regulated escrow account with Sampath Bank until your trip starts. Public liability and professional indemnity cover up to USD 5m.

Certifications

B Corp, PATA, ATTA

Certified B Corporation since 2022 (score 94.2). Active members of the Pacific Asia Travel Association and the Adventure Travel Trade Association.