With seven hotels in the south of Gran Canaria, the RIU Hotels & Resorts hotel chain has just presented its new sustainability strategy under the slogan 'Proudly Committed'. "It is the result of a deep internal reflection on the future of the hotel industry and the impact it has on the community, the environment and the employees themselves," says the hotel company with the largest operations in the south of Gran Canaria. Casa Pipa in Gran Canaria, the Red Cross, the Pequeno Valiente Foundation and Ayuda en Acción are the entities with which RIU Hotels develops a good part of its social agenda on the islands.
To do this, it puts sustainability at the center of all the company's decisions to ensure that the impact of the company's activities on both the affected society and the ecosystems is always as positive as possible. The company "has ambitious, concrete and measurable objectives in each of its four pillars: community and sustainable destinations, environment, people and transparency," he indicated this Monday. Based on this interest, RIU gets involved with the community and works with local organizations that know the particularities of the destination. The Canary Islands is one of the most important destinations of the hotel chain worldwide and leader in Europe in number of rooms and employees. Currently, RIU has 16 hotels in the archipelago (seven in Gran Canaria, four in Tenerife, four in Fuerteventura and one in Lanzarote) with a total of 6.865 rooms.
Together with four charities, RIU carries out joint projects in the Canary Islands that focus on the first pillar of the strategy: community and sustainable destinations. Furthermore, these projects are closely linked to child protection, the chain's main area of activity. Since 2014, RIU has collaborated with the Fundación Canaria Pequeno Valiente, an initiative of parents who have decided to join forces to improve the hospital stay of their children with cancer. The objective of the association is to raise awareness about childhood cancer, promote the educational integration of affected children and improve health care from a psychological, social and legal perspective. RIU supports this important work to provide support to affected families in their difficult times.
The RIU chain financially supports Casa Pipa in Gran Canaria and the accommodation in Tenerife. Both offer accommodation to families who need to travel from other islands for their children's cancer treatment. Thanks to this initiative, 30 people are currently being accommodated. Casa Pipa, inaugurated in 2023, is the first Casa Hogar on the islands that welcomes children with oncological diseases and their families. RIU also supports the “Help me continue” program in Gran Canaria, which offers physiotherapy services to patients and their families both during treatment and throughout the recovery process. In 2023, 28 children and seven parents used this physiotherapy service.
In 2023, the Canary Islands was the third autonomous community with the highest youth unemployment in Spain. More than enough reason for RIU to support, together with Ayuda en Acción, the “iMpulsa Canarias” project, which aims to facilitate the transition from training to employment. The objective is to help young people between 16 and 25 years old who are in an economically weak and socially and educationally difficult situation to acquire professional qualifications and prepare for the labor market. One of the main objectives of this project is to reduce absenteeism and school dropouts, thus improving their employability. Ayuda en Acción creates an individual and personal action plan for each young person, offering interventions inside and outside the classroom to promote personal development.
In collaboration with the Red Cross, RIU supports the “Hospitalized Childhood” project, which aims to make the hospital stay of children in Tenerife more comfortable. Games and entertainment, as well as various leisure activities, aim to distract children and reduce the social and emotional imbalance caused by long hospital stays. Improving children's quality of life through play and personal relationships is an essential factor in their recovery. As part of this program, the Red Cross also offers new technologies such as augmented reality software to encourage children's creativity and support their learning.
SOS Children's Villages and RIU have been working together since 2023 to support the operation of daycare centers in Tenerife and Gran Canaria. These centers offer comprehensive care services to children and families with social needs. The objective of this collaboration is to prevent young people from falling into risk situations and strengthen families, since they represent a fundamental pillar for the sustainable development of communities. In daycare, children receive individual activities that adapt to their needs and those of their families. They also work closely with the city's social services and educational institutions. All of these collaborations have been developed using the RIU method, an innovative method in the tourism industry that allows identifying and supporting actions that can have a positive and real impact on each community.
