RIU hotels in Mauritius are an example of innovation in service and sustainability

25 July, 2024 Share

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Luis Riu, CEO of RIU Hotels & Resorts, in the lobby of the chain’s new hotel complex in Mauritius.

RIU’s hotels in Mauritius have just been rejuvenated to concentrate all the latest product and sustainability innovations we’ve been developing in the past few years. This country captivated me when I first visited it in 2010 on holiday. It’s very, and I mean very, beautiful! I stayed in Le Morne, in a high-quality hotel that oddly enough has now become our neighbour: the Dinarobin Beachcomber. As soon as I got home, I mentioned it to Pepe and Carmen, and we all liked the idea of looking for an investment opportunity at that destination. Our chance came in 2014, and just 10 years later we have two of the chain’s best hotels in this paradise for nature and aquatic sports.

New RIU Hotels & Resorts hotel complex in Mauritius: Riu Turquoise and Riu Palace Mauritius.

Mauritius: fusion of cultures and a kitesurfing paradise

Mauritius has plenty of magic as a destination. It’s a tranquil country, small in surface area but with an exuberant natural environment. The harmonious coexistence of customs as different as those of India and China combined with its French and British heritage make it remarkable. A country of tea, sugar, and vanilla, it’s also a place where you can enjoy some of the best curries in the world, precisely because they benefit from the influence of and visits from countries with great expertise in this culinary art.

What also caught my eye is that the Le Morne peninsula is considered one of the three best kite surfing destinations in the world, for both beginners and experts, thanks to the gentle and powerful winds you can find as you walk along the beach. With the advantage that the vast coral reef protects the entire perimeter and ensures that the water in the whole area is shallow.

RIU’s first hotels in Mauritius: Riu Creole and Riu Le Morne

So when the opportunity came up to buy the complex in what I considered the best area of the country as an investment, we didn’t think twice. It was originally made up of three small hotels that we quickly unified by offering two, more oriented towards families and sports-lovers, under the name Riu Creole, and the third, slightly more sophisticated, as the Riu Le Morne. But despite all the investments, the complex was not functioning optimally. It had not been conceived of as a whole with the capacity to leverage the operating and service-related synergies but rather these were hotels with triplicated spaces and amenities.

Hotel owners don’t typically tear down hotels. And I understand that. It’s not the same to buy a hotel which—although it’s the site that interests you—is sold to you as a business, as it is to face this idea when the hotel now belongs to you and its cost has been amortised. This happened to us with the Riu Playa Park, for example, and the Riu Naiboa, which will now be part of the future Riu Palace Bavaro that we’re renovating. I myself resisted doing it a bit until I realised that investing the time and money would be very worthwhile. I would dare to say that it has turned into something very RIU.

Luis Riu, CEO of RIU Hotels & Resorts, with his sons Luis and Roberto Riu Rodríguez, representing the fourth generation of the Riu family, at the reception of the Riu Palace Mauritius, shortly before the opening of the new RIU resort in Mauritius.

New RIU hotels in Mauritius opening in 2024: Riu Turquoise and Riu Palace Mauritius

We started the demolition in November of 2022 and unveiled the new Riu Turquoise and Riu Palace Mauritius in May of 2024. Together the hotels have a total of 700 rooms, and their industrial and working areas are now designed to take advantage of the synergies and facilitate operations. In addition, their facilities are the chain’s most efficient.

1. Electrical efficiency: power generation with solar panels

To start with, as these are low buildings spread out over a kilometre of beachfront, they have massive roofs that we have used to install nearly 2,500 solar panels. We’ve had a commitment to generating photovoltaic energy for years, but Mauritius is where we’ve built our largest facility to date, one that can cover the highest percentage of the hotel’s electricity needs during peak generation hours: up to 80%.

Installation of solar panels on the roofs of the new RIU hotels in Mauritius: Riu Turquoise and Riu Palace Mauritius.

2. Sustainability in water treatment: water reuse and heat pumps

But we’ve also innovated in water treatment, with a high-efficiency, low-impact plant that produces water with excellent quality that can be reused in toilet tanks and also for watering plants. And another essential facility for the hotel is the one that produces domestic hot water, which is used for both the rooms and for swimming pools. In this case, we’ve opted for heat pumps which are considered renewable energy producers as they recover more energy from the heat they generate than they need to run.

3. Excellence in customer service: Elite Club by RIU at Riu Palace Mauritius

But the most visible benefit is not in technical aspects but in the customer service. For the first time at this destination, we’ve opened a hotel in the RIU Palace category that also offers the Elite Club, the new premium service that we’ve been introducing in many of our adults-only projects since we opened the Riu Palace Kukulkan in 2022.

• The Elite zone has its own restaurant, pool, and bar, in addition to thefinest rooms and swim-up suites.
• The Riu Palace Mauritius also has the Capuchino coffee and pastry shopand the Krystal restaurant.
• The gastronomic offer is completed by the Asian restaurant, which serves the most popular dishes from Thai, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese cuisine.

An exclusive bar in the Elite Club area at the Riu Palace Mauritius, a new RIU Hotels & Resorts hotel in Mauritius.

4. Attractive guest services at the two RIU hotels in Mauritius

The other benefit of the new complex is the large Saga theatre, which is now shared by the guests of both hotels, and the Indian restaurant and steak house, which are in the Riu Turquoise but also available for guests staying at the Riu Palace. We’ve introduced a new interior design style in all the restaurants, opting for more elegant décor and warm lighting, with more subtle, less obvious, references to the type of cuisine offered in each.

The Riu Turquoise is a family hotel with 390 rooms and facilities for children and fun for all. At the beach you can find:

• The Scuba Caribe centre, the starting point for excursions and all types of marine activities,
• The ION centre, which specialises in the destination’s star activity: kite surfing.

Luis Riu, CEO of RIU Hotels & Resorts, with the opening team of the new RIU hotels in Mauritius, Riu Turquoise and Riu Palace Mauritius.

Mauritius, the starting point for RIU’s Indian Ocean expansion

Our hotels in Mauritius were our first on the Indian Ocean. On a business level, both the African and the Asian coast of the Indian Ocean are operated by the same teams, and we organised ourselves along the same lines. The opening in 2014 was the origin of the teams that later commercialised the hotels in Sri Lanka, Zanzibar, Maldives, and Dubai. It was also the origin of increasingly specialised operations teams capable of adapting our service to the tastes and needs of markets that were new to us.

From left to right: Giorgio Chiarel, Director of Indian Ocean Operations; Geraldine Ithier, Head of Sales Mauritius; Roberto Riu, Luis Riu, Luis Riu Rodríguez; Carles Madrenas, Board Member and Moussa Lahlali, Director of Riu Palace Mauritius and Riu Turquoise hotels.

In many ways, Mauritius has been a school that has allowed us to make the leap to other countries in the region much better prepared. We are proud to present two new hotels in a destination that has so much to offer and which are an example of efficiency and innovation in service.

Riu hotels openings are never easy, so I’m taking the opportunity of this post to congratulate the operations and corporate teams that continue working to perfect the service through hard work and ongoing training of the new members. I have no doubt that these two hotels are going to be a great success.

Fdo. Luis Riu