MEET OUR TEAM
WHO WE ARE AND WHY WE LOVE TO TRAVEL
MEET THE MALINALI TEAM
Malinali Travel takes you on a journey through fascinating Mexico. Together we will discover, with all our senses, the magic of this land in all its facets. We create authentic experiences that connect us as human beings and cultures and inspire us to contribute to a better world where understanding and peace prevail.
Malinali Travel is the result of 20 years of intense contact with the cultural and natural heritage of Mexico. This experience allows us to establish a bridge between visitors and local people, with whom we have built a valuable friendship, thanks to which the visitor stops being a “tourist” and becomes a guest. We continue to travel and guide so as not to lose the taste of discovery and to never stop discovering new places and meeting new friends.
Malinali Travel is part of the Global Regenerative Tourism Initiative, a community that is co-creating a new understanding and vision to innovate in the development of tourism that goes beyond sustainability and seeks to regenerate in a holistic way the relationship between nature, culture and people.
The Malinali Travel team is made up of four women who are passionate about travel and committed to a better world. Each one has her own story and her own talents.
Murielle Coppin
founder + travel designer + certified guide + yoga teacher
Murielle is Mexican, born in Belgium. After finishing her degree in Roman Letters, she worked as a Spanish teacher in Brussels. Her love for the Hispanic world and culture became her great passion. For many years she combined her exploratory travels in Latin America with journalism and volunteer work, according to her, the ideal way to discover and get to know another country is from the inside.
Since 2005, she has been living and working in her “México lindo y querido” as a travel agent and certified guide. In 2020 he studied a diploma course in “Sustainable Business Creation” and in 2023 he obtained a certificate in Regenerative Tourism. She has designed very diverse itineraries for several agencies in her native country and directly for clients. All her trips are focused on bringing visitors closer to this complex, diverse, and beautiful country that is Mexico so that they return to their place of origin with new knowledge about other ways of living and with the hope that they can contribute to a better intercultural understanding.
From 2020, she followed various Yoga trainings to become certified as a Yoga teacher and to deepen the journey into the inner self.
“For me, traveling is walking a new, unknown path, with a lot of intersections that always lead you back to yourself. The encounter with other cultures raises many questions, and contributes to a better understanding of the world with its different ways of living. Every journey undertaken makes the traveler a more tolerant and open-minded person. Every encounter with nature is an encounter with the essence of life and with your inner peace. Traveling is both forgetting and creating, letting go and giving. To travel is to remove inner and outer impediments”.
Barbara Dolman
Marketing + sales + tour leader
Barbara is originally from the Netherlands. During a trip through Central America, she visited the small colorful city of San Cristobal de Las Casas in the mountainous area of Chiapas, Mexico, where she immediately felt at home. After completing her studies in Cultural Anthropology and International Development, she returned to Mexico and worked for twelve years in a human rights organization, where she hosted people from thirty countries who worked voluntarily in local communities. Connecting people from different worlds is her passion. Through visits to local communities, she learned countless stories, mostly of hope, culture, pride, solidarity, strength, and dignity. Staying in the communities has shown her what hospitality and family mean to the Mexican people. At Malinali Travel, she is in charge of marketing and communication, and sales.
In 2020 she studied “Strategic Marketing of Sustainable Tourism Destinations” at the Research Center for Sustainable Development (CIDES). She also accompanies groups as a guide.
“For me, traveling means getting to know other ways of living, feeling alive and free, and filling myself with energy. Letting myself get caught by sounds, colors, people, aromatic smells, and enjoying really living in the moment. I marvel at the beauty of nature. I enjoy the beautiful sights so much that sometimes they overwhelm me, and I don’t even know where to look because I want to see everything at once. Traveling is an opportunity to get to know other cultures and to open your mind; the world is so big and diverse, traveling gives us the opportunity to open our horizons”.
Addy Peréz
Administration - reservations
Addy is Mexican, Chiapaneca, and proud of her roots. She is indigenous Mayan Chol. She has worked with women of her ethnic group since she was very young to raise awareness about their rights. For fifteen years, she was part of a non-governmental organization that fights for the transformation of gender, class, and ethnic inequalities, which allowed her to grow professionally. During that time, she was responsible for the administrative area.
Since 2016, she has been working at Malinali Travel doing various tasks, such as reservations, trip tracking, payments, invoices, and contact with suppliers, among other activities.
“For me, traveling is to recharge my energy but also to fill my soul, to find myself, and to grow. It fills me with positive things, and I disconnect from my daily routine. Traveling is one of life’s pleasures; you learn many things, such as cultures and histories, you know places, and people, you live with nature, and you learn to be more patient. The negative things you encounter help you to generate awareness that nothing is eternal. Traveling helps you to value life and it shows you that you have to enjoy it to the fullest because there is only one!”
Gabriela Fuentes
Historian + Certified Tour Guide + Experience Designer + Birdwatcher
Gaby was born in Cacahoatán, the “Land of Chocolate”, located in the southernmost corner of the state of Chiapas, Mexico, but has lived in San Cristóbal de Las Casas since 2003. She is a historian by profession with several years of teaching experience; she loves academia but also travel, rediscovering the world and outdoor activities, especially bird watching.
She is a lover of art, design and in recent years, traditional textiles. These interests began when she focused her studies on pre-Hispanic art and Mayan iconography and discovered that ancient symbols have been preserved in their forms and meanings within the current native peoples and are constantly expressed in multiple practices and attitudes.
Gaby has participated in academic stays abroad and international volunteering, she has been a couchsurfer and Airbnb Superhost; all these experiences have given her perspective, empathy and sensitivity to be the person she dreamed of: to be a hostess who promotes openness to diversity and understanding of the multiplicity of human realities.
She promotes good tourism practices and the co-creation of fair relationships that generate greater respect and recognition of local knowledge. She is also driven by sustainability, regeneration and biodiversity conservation; since 2018 she participates in the Urban Birds Program and since 2019 in the Network of Birdwatchers in Mexico Amazilias where she coordinates the Avitourism commission.
“Traveling is for me the ideal path to tolerance and understanding. Traveling has given me perspective, a sense of identity and has inspired me to help other travelers have genuine and unforgettable experiences during their stays in the land where I was born”.