Interactive map · Hostel chain · Tirana, Albania
A city guide the hostel staff update themselves
A hostel chain in Tirana wanted one place to send guests who ask where to go. I built an interactive map guide with an editor the staff can use on their own, and no server to maintain.
The starting point
Guests ask the same questions every day: where to eat, where to work with a laptop, where to catch the bus. The hostel wanted a single link to send them, kept up to date by the staff without asking anyone.
What I built
- A public map of the places around the hostels, in ten categories, from staff picks and working cafés to bakeries, markets, gyms and bus stops, each with its own colour and icon.
- A button that shows guests where they are compared to everything else.
- An editor protected by a password: the staff add, move and edit places right on the map, with automatic saving and a backup button.
- An embed snippet: one line of code puts the live map on the hostel’s website, with a full-screen button.
No server to pay for
The data lives in a Google Sheet, which the staff already know how to use, connected through a small Google Apps Script. The map itself is a static page that can be hosted for free. Nothing to maintain, nothing to renew.
Under the hood
- Leaflet
- OpenStreetMap data
- Google Sheets
- Google Apps Script
- Static hosting
The password never sits in the site’s code: the editor asks for it and keeps it only for the session.