The RIU story
If you have ever booked a week of winter sun, RIU has probably been on the shortlist. It is one of the most familiar names in the package-holiday business, and it earned that by doing the same simple thing well for more than seventy years.
The story starts in Mallorca in 1953, where the Riu family opened a small beachfront hotel and then kept opening them. Around 100 resorts in 22 countries later, the formula has barely changed: a good beach, a generous buffet, a pool worth spending the day at, and a price that leaves room for a second trip. Loyalty to RIU tends to be the quiet kind, the sort where people rebook because it did not let them down last time.
There is more range than the reputation suggests. The core RIU resorts are built for families and all-ages groups, RIU Palace is the step up with better dining and adults-only options, and RIU Plaza is a small line of city hotels for a stopover, including one in downtown Toronto. But the heart of the brand is still that easy, all-inclusive beach week.
And RIU is almost everywhere the sun is: Cancun and the Riviera Maya, Los Cabos and Puerto Vallarta, Punta Cana, the Jamaican coast, Aruba, Costa Rica, and back across the Atlantic in Spain and the Canary Islands. For a traveller who wants dependable warmth without a lot of homework, it is hard to go too far wrong.
