The hotel chain RIU Hotels & Resorts has received an award at the 6th edition of the Re Think Hotel Awards, which take place at the International Tourism Fair (FITUR) in Madrid. The prize recognises the Spanish hotel sector’s best sustainability and rehabilitation projects. Riu Playa Park Hotel was the lucky winner this year as it was included in the “Top 10 Re Think Hotel Projects to be Implemented” category.
The awards ceremony took place on 21 January in the conference hall of the Madrid Ministry of Tourism, and collecting the award was Lola Trián, Head of Sustainability, who attended the event together with Catalina Alemany, Director of the CSR department. For Lola Trián, “it is a real honour to attend these awards each year and to present our hotels, because the environment is one of RIU’s biggest commitments to society. That is why, through the hotels, we are investing in new formulas that ensure a more efficient use of energy.”
Riu Playa Park is a very important project for RIU, as the hotel was demolished and rebuilt in 2019. The new hotel now has a residual energy use system to heat water for use in the hotel. In this way, here and in the majority of the chain’s hotels, water is heated using residual energy produced by the air conditioning system. As a result, the energy efficiency is up to 600% higher than in conventional systems.
The Re Think Hotel awards bring together the public and private sectors. Their aim is to activate the interest of people working in tourism in sustainable hotel rehabilitation, both for the economic and environmental benefits offered by its implementation, and in order to generate key strategic value for the sector’s future development. Re Think is an initiative organised by Habitat Futura Group, in partnership with the Institute for Energy Saving and Diversification (IDEAE), an agency of the Spanish Ministry for Industry, Energy and Tourism, and with the Spanish Office for Climate Change (OECC), an agency of the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Environment.
The international RIU chain was founded in Mallorca by the Riu family in 1953 as a small holiday firm and is still owned by the family's third generation. The company specialises in holiday resorts and over 74% of its establishments offer its acclaimed All Inclusive by RIU service. With the inauguration of its first city hotel in 2010, RIU is expanding its range of products with its own line of city hotels called Riu Plaza. RIU Hotels & Resorts now has 98 hotels in 21 countries. In 2024, the chain welcomed 6,7 million guests and provided jobs for a total of 38.055 employees. RIU is currently the world's 40th ranked chain, one of the Caribbean's most popular, and the fourth largest in Spain in number of rooms.