Luis Riu: “Twenty years ago Cape Verde was a personal gamble, today it’s a great international destination with its own character and dynamic”

9 November, 2022 Share

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It was over twenty years ago that I was invited to visit the land where the RIU hotels stand on the island of Sal. At that point in time I could never have imagined that today the Cape Verde archipelago would be one of our strongest international destinations. It’s the firm favourite of our European customers in winter. It’s also the place where our arrival and expansion has had the most direct and evident impact on the lives of those we work with on the ground and the economies of the islands.

Luis Riu in his review of the 20-year history of RIU Hotels & Resorts in Cape Verde.

Sal and Boa Vista are two slices of paradise where our guests can ‘just’ enjoy the mild climate, exceptional friendliness of the people and a place to unwind. The peace that this destination transmits is what drew me to them in the first place. Me and 300,000 RIU guests a year!

Cape Verde: the story of a personal endeavour that began 20 years ago

Cape Verde was a personal gamble. I wasn’t the first business person who had been shown the land to build hotels on, but I was the first who decided to make the investment. The plot didn’t have electricity, running water or drainage. The developer himself offered to provide this service by establishing the company Aguas de Ponta Preta. Neither of us had worked in Cape Verde before. Nor had we worked together on any previous project. So it was a leap of faith but we made it. Today it’s the source of a whole lot of satisfaction.

But getting to where we are today has been a long and somewhat bumpy road. It was Executive Director Félix Casado who got to experience Cape Verde first-hand, day after day, night after night and he has fond memories of the place. When you hear him talk, you notice straight away how proud he is, especially of the people he worked with on the ground. We sent a RIU hotel team that had been trained in the Canaries to open that first hotel in Sal. In fact, the first person from the Canary Islands to arrive on Sal, who paved the way for the rest, was Fernando Sánchez, who led the build of the first hotels on the island and a further two on Boa Vista.

RIU Hotels & Resorts’ management team in Cape Verde: Sergio Lobenstein, Director of Operations for RIU in the Canary Islands and Cape Verde; Juan Carlos Dreher, Operations area delegate for Tenerife and Cape Verde; Luis Riu, CEO; and Felix Casado, Atlantic Area director.

But things are very different now. All the heads of department of all the hotels in Cape Verde have been trained in our Sal and Boa Vista hotels. A professional and motivated team has been created, and we have been able to promote 50 of them to take charge of opening our first hotel in Senegal. They’ve morphed from being trained to being trainers for RIU’s future professionals in Africa.

RIU team of 56 employees in Cape Verde in charge of opening the first RIU hotel in Senegal, the Riu Baobab.

This process has largely been down to Félix’s first big success: hiring Carlos Almeida. The Human Resources director at RIU in Cape Verde is an exceptional human being: competent, serious, honest and highly respected. He has won the affection and admiration of all of us and of the employees. He has helped us to understand the idiosyncrasies of Cape Verde, dodge mistakes and forge the excellent team that we have today.

Carlos Almeida and Carmelo González, HR managers at RIU Hotels & Resorts in Cape Verde and Gran Canaria.

RIU, a key player in Cape Verde’s tourism transformation

Mr. Almeida is an upstanding pillar of RIU and he himself would say that he has borne witness to the great transformations that RIU has brought about over the last 20 years.

1. RIU Hotels, the largest private employer in Cabo Verde

Before the first hotel opened in Riu Funana in 2005, there were only five small hotels on the island. Their main customers were the crews from South African Airways and Aeroflot who would stop off there to refuel on their longer journeys. The local population tended to work in the mines on the island of Sal, so the arrival of international tourists was a new source of employment that first attracted local workers, then others from other islands in the archipelago and later on from Guinea Bissau and Senegal. In fact, impressively, RIU has become a leading employer in the country, second only to the Cape Verde government.

2. RIU’s contribution, a driver of local development

The transformation of the islands has even had an impact on their infrastructure— take for example the Boa Esperança area of Boa Vista. We went there to recruit employees for the opening of the first hotel on the island, the Riu Karamboa, in 2008, because we were having problems finding enough people to make up the team. Félix, Carlos Almeida and Carles Madrenas, the Managing Director, got in a car and drove there, getting out among run-down houses and lots of people milling around in the street, together with goats, dogs and pigs, scarce infrastructure and limited opportunities. 90% of our employees from Boa Vista came from there. And now it’s a real pleasure to visit Buena Esperanza. The neighbourhood has undergone a real transformation.

3. Training and professional opportunities for the people of Cape Verde

It never mattered whether they had experience or training, we took care of that on the job, and they have also had language courses and training for specific positions, such as food handling. RIU has been their education, and as we have continued to open hotels, they have had the opportunity to prosper professionally. The people we work with, and their open, happy and attentive natures, have been extraordinary. They feel part of the project and part of the family. Félix movingly tells of how many of them shed tears of happiness when they are given a promotion.

RIU hotels Managers in Boa Vista: Hugo da Ponte (Manager of Palace Boavista), Marco Teixeira (Manager of Riu Karamboa), Antonio Luque (deputy manager of Riu Karamboa), Agostinho Januario (deputy manager of Riu Karamboa) and Samuel Lagast (Manager of Riu Touareg).

Cape Verde, a destination full of good memories and challenges for the Riu family

We have a real soft spot for Cape Verde, which has been an important part of the Riu family’s trajectory. Take my nephew Joan Trian Riu for example, who carried out part of his training there as deputy manager of the Riu Funana hotel. He was there for a year and took home many precious memories of his time there. It was also hard. Each destination has their difficulties and Cape Verde is no exception. On Boa Vista we have definitely been through some tough times, transferring employees or guests to other islands or to the Canary Islands if anything serious happened.

Luis Riu Güell, CEO of RIU Hotels & Resorts, with his sons, Luis Riu Rodríguez and Roberto Riu Rodríguez.

But there have also been some incredible moments there too. The landing strip is not lit and all air operations have to take place during the day. If there’s an emergency however, all the cars on the island are called in to line up along the runway with their headlights on so that flights can land and then take off.

Health and social projects focused on improving the lives of Cape Verdeans

Fortunately the medical services there are much better now. RIU has collaborated with the privately-run Boa Esperanza Clinic, as well as the public clinic by donating the necessary equipment to cover certain shortages, always in tandem with the Ministry of Health. And since 2014 we have been working with África Avanza, which has carried out 45 co-operation missions in the country in the form of consultations, training and surgical interventions.

Also in collaboration with the ministries for tourism and health, we have managed to get two doctors posted there with the experience necessary to support local teams in their actions against the COVID crisis. Health was not the only thing that was impacted; the closure of hotels also had severe repercussions and we activated emergency assistance to cover the basic needs of the community while they were coming to grips with the pandemic.

Riu promotes the creation of roads, an airport and other vital infrastructure

We have just reopened the Riu Karamboa hotel after an extensive refurbishment. When I think of these beginnings on the island it never ceases to amaze me that we were able to overcome these difficulties at the time. The challenges were much greater than on Sal because the island is bigger, but less populated. Just receiving the material necessary for the build was an adventure in itself, because the container ships could not dock for days or weeks due to the powerful African waves.

Team of department managers of the Hotel Riu Karamboa in Cape Verde.

The same went for all the goods needed for operations. So hotels had to redo their plans. In the event that ships couldn’t dock, they had to have sufficient alternative products to keep everything running and the buffets stocked. But this doesn’t happen anymore, not since the port was redesigned and arrivals and departures are much more regular.

Another thing to mention is that Boa Vista airport wasn’t exactly international either. When we started the build, we had the government’s word that it would be operational by the time we opened. It opened the night before. And since then, it has been in operation bringing our customers from the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Norway, Germany and Belgium. Whenever I am asked about tour operators and whether they are losing importance in the hotel trade, Cape Verde automatically springs to mind. This destination fully depends on charter operations. Without the involvement of our partner TUI, which ran parallel to ours, the destination would never have got off the ground as successfully as it has.

Managers and department heads of the three RIU hotels in Boa Vista, Cape Verde.

Boa Vista perfectly represents that slice of paradise where you hide away to unwind with its amazing pristine sandy beaches, tiny villages, charming nooks and total tranquility. We opened the Riu Touareg there in 2011 and the road to get to there was rocky. The Riu Karamboa is next to the airport and very close to Sal Rei, but the Riu Touareg is on the other side of the island. It’s on an incredible sandbank, but the only road in or out is long and windy: a daily adventure for all those in charge of the build. Before construction work started, we agreed with the authorities on its improvement and asphalting. The very same morning as the opening, Mr. Neves, the then prime minister, who had already inaugurated our two hotels on Sal, was the first to drive down it in a double inauguration, that of the hotel and the new Boa Vista road.

Team of department managers of the Hotel Riu Touareg in Cape Verde

Cape Verde, a tourist destination in constant development with RIU

Our commitment to the destination has continued to grow:

• In 2018 we opened the Riu Palace Boavista, the chain’s fifth hotel in Cape Verde, to round out the destination’s offering with our Riu Palace range. All of the hotels are operated by Cape Verde professionals or those who were trained there. Almost all of those who accepted the offer to go to Senegal to continue developing together with RIU came from Boa Vista.

Team of department managers of the Hotel Riu Palace Boa Vista in Cape Verde.

• The Riu Palace Santa Mariais also the source of a great deal of pride. We opened the hotel in March 2021, with more of a brave-face and enthusiasm to restart operations there than actual possibilities of doing business because flights were still not operating. It’s a large hotel, with a lot of amenities and whose build has allowed us to improve the offering for the three hotels thanks to the shared services such as the Splash Water World and the Riu Party option, which has just arrived on Sal and is on the verge of being incorporated into Boa Vista.

Luis Riu with his operations team in the preliminary examination of RIU hotels in Cape Verde.

And we are not only innovating with our products, but also opting for renewable energies. We have already installed solar panels for photovoltaic energy production both on Sal and Boa Vista, and we have an ambitious aim in mind to increase renewable energy production soon for operations to run fully on clean energy.

The islands suffered really badly during the COVID pandemic. That’s why it gives me great pride to see how they have regained their position as the favourite winter destination for European holidaymakers. The Cape Verde Islands offer many sites and have become the looking glass into which many African countries gaze, willing tourism to become the driving force of their economic growth. We want to continue supporting the islands hand in hand with the authorities, our people on the ground there and, of course, our customers.

Fdo. Luis Riu