How RIU got here
One 80-bed hotel on Playa de Palma, bought in November 1953 and still open today. Along the way: a sales trip that doubled as a honeymoon, a decade of hotels named after Western films, and a dolphin that is still above the door of the first one.
Founded 1953 · Playa de Palma, Mallorca, Spain · Last reviewed August 2026
- 1953
Eighty beds on Playa de Palma
In November, Juan Riu Masmitjà, his wife María Bertrán and their son Luis buy the Hotel San Francisco on Mallorca's Playa de Palma, a modest place of about 80 beds. It is still operating, as the adults-only Hotel Riu San Francisco, though it has been substantially rebuilt and enlarged since.
- 1976
The company built with TUI
RIU and TUI set up a joint hotel-development company, which gives the family money, customers and distribution in one arrangement. The hotel-operating partnership still runs today, though the Riu family regained full ownership of a major property-holding company in 2021.
- 1977
Mopeds through the lobby
Playa de Palma in the 1960s and 1970s could be rowdy. Luis Riu has recalled working as a night receptionist in 1977 and watching the police turn out again and again to the hotel next door. One night, drunk holidaymakers rode three yellow rental mopeds straight through the Riu Bali lobby, got to the lifts, turned around and rode back out.
- 1980
Río Bravo, after the John Wayne film
Luis Riu Bertrán loved Westerns, and named the 1980 Río Bravo after the film. The hotel next door became Río Grande, and a smaller one was named, logically enough, Río Chico. By the middle of the decade all eight hotels had been brought under the Río name.
- 1985
Off Mallorca, to the Canaries
The first expansion beyond Mallorca. It is a short hop compared with what follows, but it is the point at which RIU stops being a Playa de Palma business.
- 1989
The first Riu Palace
The Palace name reportedly came from a German guest who looked at an architect's drawing of the future Maspalomas hotel and said it looked like a palace. Luis Riu liked the description enough to keep it, and the first Riu Palace opened in 1989.
- 1991
Across the Atlantic
The Riu Taíno opens in Punta Cana, the chain's first significant move outside Spain. The Americas go on to become one of its most important regions.
- 1998
The third generation, jointly
After their father's death, siblings Carmen and Luis Riu Güell take over and run the company together for 26 years.
- 2010
Riu Plaza, and cities
After 56 years of doing almost nothing but holiday resorts, RIU launches a city-hotel brand. It ends up in Times Square, Madrid's Edificio España, Chicago, London, Dublin and Toronto.
- 2021
Buying the buildings back
The family regains full ownership of a major property-holding company previously shared with TUI. The operating partnership continues; the bricks come home.
- 2024
The fourth generation
Carmen Riu steps back from executive duties, and five members of the fourth generation take larger roles. The company is still controlled by the founding family.
What the dates leave out
The deal done on a honeymoon
Luis Riu Bertrán and his bride Pilar Güell travelled to Germany, where he meant to offer the family's Mallorca rooms to tour operators. On the first day the agency Dr. Tigges, an ancestor of today's TUI, reportedly bought the entire allotment, which left the rest of the honeymoon free. That meeting is the start of RIU's unusually close relationship with the German market, and Luis Riu Bertrán went on to help organise some of the early charter flights from Germany to Mallorca. The company did not wait to be found; it arranged for the planeloads.
Río, then RIU, and a dolphin
The hotels carried the Río name, accent included, into the mid-1980s before the company switched to RIU: the family surname, and easier to tell apart internationally. The first hotel's original emblem was not the red RIU logo at all but a dolphin, which is still above the entrance of the Hotel Riu San Francisco.
Two Luises
The name recurs, which makes the story easy to misread. Luis Riu is the founders' son, who bought the first hotel with his parents in 1953; Luis Riu Bertrán named the Río hotels and opened the German market; Luis Riu Güell is of the third generation, and ran the company with his sister Carmen from 1998.
It owns the buildings
RIU is unusual in owning or co-owning much of its real estate rather than putting its name on hotels somebody else owns. That cuts both ways: it is more exposed financially when tourism stops, and it has far tighter control of renovations and of how the hotels are actually run.
The Mallorca cluster
RIU is one of four major hotel companies founded by families on the same island. RIU bought its first hotel on Playa de Palma in 1953, the Fluxà family behind Iberostar had been in Mallorca since 1877 making shoes, Barceló started in 1931 with a single bus in Felanitx, and Gabriel Escarrer leased his first Palma hotel in 1956 and built Meliá. A single Mediterranean island produced a remarkable share of the companies that now run the Caribbean's all-inclusive resorts. A fifth Spanish group, Grupo Piñero, reached the same island from the other direction: founded in Murcia, made its name with a hotel in the Dominican Republic, and now runs Bahia Principe out of Palma.
Where it ended up
Roughly 100 hotels, split between beachfront resorts, the higher-end Riu Palace properties and the urban Riu Plaza hotels. Seventy years on from a hotel with 80 beds.
Everything we read on RIU
Where the company's own materials disagree with each other, we print both readings rather than choosing the tidier one.