TravelParamaribo

About this site

TravelParamaribo is a structured, sourced database of places and practical information in Suriname, with a website attached to it.

Why it exists

Suriname is thinly covered online. Much of what does exist is copied between sites, undated, and wrong by the time you read it: opening hours from 2016, a phone number for a business that moved, a "top 10" assembled by someone who has never been.

This site is an attempt at the opposite trade-off: fewer entries, each one traceable. For every important fact (an address, a set of opening hours, a phone number), the database stores the source it came from and the date that source was read. The page shows both. Where there is no source, the field is simply absent.

How entries are made

  1. A place is researched, and each claim is recorded against a source URL.
  2. A person reviews it. Nothing is published automatically: not by an import, not by an agent, not by any process that does not involve someone deciding.
  3. An entry is only published once its existence is verified against a government, official or platform source and it clears a quality threshold.
  4. Entries are re-checked on a schedule; volatile subjects twice as often.

The full sourcing and freshness policy is written out on its own page, including how automated systems should read and cite this site.

Who is behind it

It is a small independent project, not a publisher and not a tourism board. There is no editorial team to introduce, and inventing one would be exactly the kind of thing this site exists to avoid. Corrections and questions reach a person at hello@travelparamaribo.com.

How it is funded, and what that does not buy

The site carries sponsored placements. A sponsored placement is always shown in its own block, with a visible disclosure label, separate from any editorial list. It never changes what appears in an editorial list or in what order, and there is no field in the database that could make it do so.

The site's owner also owns a Surinamese tour operator, Switi Tours, started in 2026. It receives no editorial preference: it is researched, verified and listed by exactly the same rules as every other business, and its prices sit in comparison tables on the same terms as everyone else's. What common ownership does buy is the preferred booking action on pages describing excursions Switi Tours genuinely sells or can arrange, always in a block labelled "From the owner of this site". The full policy, including how other operators are shown, is on the sourcing page.

What this site does not do

  • It does not publish reviews or ratings, because it does not collect any.
  • It does not take bookings itself. Booking buttons on this site go to Switi Tours, the owner's operator, and are labelled as such; no other business pays for or receives one.
  • It does not track you across the web. There is no advertising network, no cookie banner, and no personal data in the traveller question form at /ask.
  • It does not fill gaps with plausible-sounding text.

Business and trip enquiries

Two forms are different from the anonymous question form above, by design: the business enquiry form on /for-businesses and the trip-request form at/enquire/…, shown only for a handful of excursions someone has actually verified as bookable right now. Both ask for your name, email, and (optionally) phone number, because a request only works if someone can reply to it.

  • Only the site's admin can see these submissions; they are never public and never shared with any analytics or advertising service.
  • A trip request is currently only offered for excursions sold by Switi Tours, the owner's own operator. We review each request and follow up using the contact details given; it is not a confirmed booking, and TravelParamaribo does not process payment for it.
  • An enquiry that does not lead anywhere is kept for up to 12 months after we close it, then deleted; one that leads to a booking or a paid order is kept alongside that record.

Photography

Dense rainforest at Brownsberg Nature Park: tall slender trunks, layered green undergrowth and sunlight breaking through the canopy.
Rainforest at Brownsberg Nature Park, Brokopondo. Photo: -JvL-, CC BY 2.0.

The site has no photographer of its own, so the photographs are borrowed rather than invented. Every one comes from Wikimedia Commons under a licence that permits commercial use. The photographs that head this site's own pages are listed below with their author, licence and a link back to the original file; a photograph on a place page shows the place itself and is credited directly beneath it. Each was cropped and resampled for the web; under the share-alike terms the adapted versions stay under the same licence as the originals. The full machine-checkable record is kept with the files themselves.

Sections without a photograph, Eat & drink, Practical and Work, are missing one on purpose. Nothing freely licensed was good enough, and a tired stock-looking photograph would say less than the text does.

Getting something changed

If you run a business listed here, claim your listing. If you are a traveller and something is wrong or missing, tell us, or ask the question you came here to answer, which is how we decide what to research next.