As the fourth generation of the Rui family prepares to take the reins of a Spanish hotel business which has defied all expectations, expansion plans are as bold as ever. The year 2026 has seen Rui Hotels & Resorts enter Asia-Pacific with the Riu Palace Phuket, marking its Thai debut. The business also launched a new hotel in Zanzibar, Riu Palace Swahili, and opened its second London property, The Hotel Riu Plaza London The Westminster, following the 2023 launch of the Hotel Riu Plaza London Victoria.
Rui Hotels & Resorts today boasts a portfolio of over 100 hotels in 22 countries, with almost 90 percent under ownership, due to recent strategic acquisitions. With 2025 booking record results, including revenues of €4.188 billion and global average occupancy of 88 percent – which CEO Luis Riu calls “near technical capacity” – the group has plenty to look forward to.
Family management
The business began its journey in 1953 in Mallorca, when the Riu family acquired the Hotel Riu San Francisco in Playa de Palma. While the firm has concentrated on all-an inclusive model for around 75 percent of its hotels since, it also opened its first city hotel in 2010, adding the urban flag, Riu Plaza, to its stable.
Despite betting on international expansion and major corporate partnerships over more than 70 years, the business is still run by the family today, with the third generation of management ensuring that the fourth generation now gets to experience operations and ownership.
For Luis Riu, 2025 marked a subtle yet significant management shift. His erstwhile co-CEO and sister, Carmen, retired from executive duties in 2024. That meant that 2025 was “my first full year as sole CEO and the main change I experienced was the close relationship with the fourth generation” Luis Riu said, adding: “Before, my sister Carmen and I discussed all decisions, but now I talk them through with the younger ones. For now, they usually confide in my judgement, taking on all our projects with excitement and seeing big decisions as opportunities for professional growth.”
Ownership preference
A slate of shrewd deals in the wake of the pandemic have served to underline the importance of hands-on experience. Firstly, in May 2021, Riu bought out a hotel ownership stake of long-term partner, holiday giant Tui, as the latter sought to stabilise cash flows post Covid. In a deal valued at €670 million, Riu acquired Tui’s 49 percent stake in 19 Riu branded hotels, plus two more hotels that were under development at the time. As holders of the remaining 51 percent stake, this resulted in the family reassuming 100 percent ownership of the properties. In a statement, the family said the operation came “in the context of the crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic” which had provided “confirmation that the ownership model [was] an advantage in facing this crisis”. They added: “Taking 100% control of the ownership of these hotels provides additional agility in confronting possible paradigm changes in the near future”.
This important deal proved the springboard for another shift in April 2025, as the Riu Group merged its holdings Riu Hotels and Hotel San Francisco – comprising 51 hotels in total – “as part of its corporate reorganisation and simplification project”. The board of directors of the newly streamlined Riu Hotels comprises all members of the fourth generation of the Riu family. Just a few hotels remain in third party hands, while RIUSA II, which is jointly owned by TUI and the Riu family, and itself owns 29 hotels, remains the management company of the entire portfolio.
Milestones and sustainability
To understand the success of Rui Hotels & Resorts, it is worth examining its ground-up approach to the markets it enters. This combines a rooted understanding of what makes each market tick with a valuable community-focused approach.
Cape Verde is a case in point, a country which Riu entered in 2005 with the Riu Funana hotel on Sal Island. Currently, Riu has six hotels in the destination, three on Sal and three on Boa Vista, totalling 4,649 rooms. The UK is Riu’s primary market here for both summer and winter travel, followed by Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, France, Belgium, and Scandinavia.
Riu employs around 3,400 people on the island, some 92 percent of whom are Cape Verdean, with 225 holding management positions. The firm has also earmarked an investment of 165 million Cape Verdean escudos for the period 2024-2026 to support various social and environmental projects in the country.
These include exploring new ways to reduce its carbon footprint through the use of renewable energy and developing a protection plan for the Ponta Sino natural area on the island of Sal. Riu’s community impact initiatives, meanwhile, include the Children's Health Clinic in Espargos on Sal, which opened in April 2023 and has provided over 5,500 paediatric consultations since inception. The business has also pursued the expansion and renovation of schools on the island of Boa Vista, as well as the funding of kindergartens and childcare centres like Casa Solidariedade, the Disney Kindergarten, and the Florescer Children's and Youth Centre. It even backs animal welfare programmes in the communities it invests in, such as dog and cat control, sterilisation and adoption programmes.
These kinds of initiatives reflect a holistic commitment to sustainability, underlined by a strategy to achieve Ecostars certification for all of its hotels. Ecostars is considered one of the leading ESG (environmental, social and governance) AI platform for hotels, recognised by international organisations such as UN Tourism and national bodies like the Spanish Tourism Council. According to Xisca Sitjar, Riu’s operational sustainability manager, the programme was chosen due to its comparative analysis platform, which provides Riu with a clear overview of its consumption by comparing its hotels against a wide community of establishments with similar characteristics. The metrics provided help the business optimise energy and water consumption.
Furthermore, according to the firm, adherence to a sustainability programme facilitates access to niche markets with increasingly demanding sustainability requirements, attracts travellers that are highly sensitive to ESG criteria, and helps mitigate regulatory and financial risks related to environmental management.