Meet the team
We're Marco, Ivan, Vaiva and Alina, an interdisciplinary team working across, service and experience design, regenerative tourism and agriculture, community-based hospitality, wellbeing, storytelling, and how systems shape everyday life and travel.
We've worked with destinations, organisations, and communities across different contexts, and we've seen first-hand how tourism can either hollow places out, or help them thrive.
We see our role as curators, listeners, and connectors, creating the conditions for communities to be seen, supported, and valued, without being reshaped to fit a platform.
photo: Mark de Jong
photo: Mark de Jong
What inspired us
Coralia was inspired by the people, stories, and places we encountered in our own journeys, as travellers, observers, and creative thinkers.
Again and again, we met communities quietly doing meaningful work: caring for their land, keeping traditions alive, and creating experiences rooted in real life.
The most memorable moments are shaped by participation rather than performance. Where travellers are welcomed into real practices, and places are shared without being reshaped to meet tourist expectations.
The problem we keep seeing is how tourism is often designed and managed today, prioritising destinations over people. Value leaving communities instead of strengthening them. Cultures being simplified, traditions being staged, and places adapted to visitors rather than supported for long-term wellbeing.
The good news is
Many communities are already creating experiences that do more than just attract travellers. They actively support the ecosystems, cultures, and places they are part of.
These experiences are shaped by local guides, farmers and small producers, hosts and families, young innovators, festival organisers, artisans, artists, and stewards of land or urban spaces. Different roles, different contexts, but one thing in common: a deep sense of care that goes beyond individual benefit.
Coralia exists to make these experiences easier to find, all in one place, in close collaboration with the people behind them, and always with respect for their rhythm, priorities, and way of working.
It is for independent travellers who love to explore places through community-led experiences that add meaning, positive impact, and can be integrated freely into their own journeys.
What we believe in
We don't expect travellers to be perfect. We don't expect communities to perform.
We believe travel should regenerate life, honour communities, and invite participation.
Travel should help a place thrive based on a mutual value exchange.
Meaningful travel is participatory: we join the life of a place with respect.
Slower and intentional travel creates deeper value.
We don't need to travel far to travel deeper.
Where we're going
We're building Coralia step by step, starting with communities in Europe. We already have a very exciting list of hosts, growing everyday, that we would love to share with you at the beginning of 2026.
If all this resonates with you and it sparked some curiosity, we'd love to hear from you.