Who are we
and what drives us?
OUR MISSION
​Giving accommodation providers, hospitality businesses, tour operators and experience providers the confidence to say NO to single-use products by providing high quality, effective tools and support to help them implement new ways of working, engage suppliers in the search for solutions and to reset customer expectations that less really is more.
A world where the global travel sector no longer relies on single-use products to deliver travel and tourism experiences.
OUR VISION
To significantly reduce travel and tourism's contribution to waste and plastic pollution, which in many cases is polluting natural environments, harming wildlife and impacting on the lives of local people in the very destinations that people travel to enjoy.
OUR PURPOSE
How It All Started - The Styrofoam Breakfast
In 2011, Jo Hendrickx co-managed a single-use plastic reduction project in Cyprus together with The Travel Foundation whilst she was working at The Thomas Cook Group, but it wasn't until 2017 when Travel Without Plastic was founded.
Jo was auditing excursion venues in line with the ABTA Animal Welfare Standards and during a visit to the USA, she was dismayed to come across what she has now coined "The Styrofoam Breakfast" in almost every hotel she stayed in during the trip. This experience set off the chain of events that saw Travel Without Plastic come to life.
Knowing from her own experience that travel hotels don't have to rely on single-use plastic, Jo undertook many conversations with hotel managers to find out what the biggest obstacles were to reducing and eliminating unnecessary single-use plastic. From there, the first "Let's Reduce Single-Use Toolkit" was created.
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Since then, Travel Without Plastic has gone on to work with international hotel chains and organisations as well as smaller independent companies, tour operators and development organisations that are all looking to minimise their consumption of unnecessary single-use plastic.
Our Team
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Jo Hendrickx
Founder
Rachel McCaffery
Business Development & EU Projects
Adrián Calcines
Assistant Project Manager
Jo has worked in tourism for over 20 years from tour operating to hotel receptions. She has a degree in Responsible Tourism Management, is an auditor for Travelife for Accommodations and was previously the Global Sustainable Destinations Manager at the Thomas Cook Group.
Knowing from her own experience that hotels don't have to rely on single-use plastic, Jo undertook many conversations with hotel managers to find out what the biggest obstacles were to reducing and eliminating unnecessary single-use plastic. From there, the first "Let's Reduce Single-Use Toolkit" was created.
Jo joined forces with Rachel McCaffery in 2018 to bring the kit to life and they quickly began working with hotel and tour operator clients from around the world. The success of the business comes down to having decades of combined experience in the tourism industry, including health and safety auditing, sustainability auditing and implementing quality assurance programmes in hotels. It is this deep understanding of hotel operations and realistic approach to change that hoteliers value the most.
Rachel is a sustainable tourism consultant, working for over 20 years with private sector, governments and destinations to improve environmental and social impact in destinations. She has contributed to numerous sustainable tourism planning and development tools in use around the world.
In November 2022, the team needed to expand to keep up with the workload and we were joined by Adrián Calcines. Adrián is working closely with Jo to create a hybrid "Let´s Reduce Single-Use System" for hotels and tour operators that will enable them to work at their own pace by accessing digital training and tools, but with the advantage of 1:1 personalised support from the TWP Team.
Adrián was born in the Canary Islands and has worked in hotels in Australia and Germany before becoming the head of yield at a Canarian hotel group. He manages beach cleans for Oceans4Life Gran Canaria in his spare time. He also supports hotels to meet the Travelife for Accommodation standards.
Some of our clients
After almost 6 very successful years, we've shared a lot and learned even more.
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We have seen the trends amongst the hotels that are most successful at eliminating single-use waste without compromising on the guest experience, and we've been able to draw on our Health and Safety background to help hotels navigate through the pandemic without being reliant on single-use plastic.
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We're looking forward to achieving an ever bigger impact as we move towards 2024 with new clients and new opportunities for collaboration.