RIU Has All Its Hotels Certified with Travelife

RIU Hotels & Resorts now has all its hotels certified with the Travelife Gold Award. The latest resorts to receive this important award have been the chain's hotels in Panama, Costa Rica and the Bahamas, as well as the Riu Palace Aruba.

The Gold certificate represents the highest level of compliance with the requirements established by the Travelife international sustainability certification scheme.

The Travelife Gold Awards are the final step in achieving the Corporate Social Responsibility Plan's strategic goal of having certificates for all RIU-owned hotels except those currently being restored or under construction. This is a goal that RIU expected to reach by early 2015, but that Travelife's auditors confirmed at the end of last year.

From the very beginning of the project to certify all the RIU hotels, the participation and involvement of staff in every country have been vital to meet the goals set. The hotels recently distinguished with the Travelife Gold Award have been: the new Riu Playa Blanca, opened on Panama's Pacific coast less than a year ago; the Riu Plaza Panama, located in this country's capital city; the Riu Palace Paradise Island in the Bahamas; the Riu Palace Aruba; and finally the two hotels in Costa Rica, the Riu Guanacaste (pictured above) and Riu Palace Costa Rica.

The Travelife system sets a range of social and environmental criteria and, depending on their level of compliance, tourism companies can be awarded three levels: Bronze, Silver or Gold.

This tool allows travellers to choose, from among all the products and services available, those hotels that are making an effort to operate more responsibly in terms of the environment and the local community, showing their commitment to issues such as fair wages and a reduction of water and energy use.

In total, 77 RIU hotels have so far been certified by Travelife, and all of them have achieved the highest level of compliance. These hotels are located in Spain, Cape Verde, Portugal, Morocco, Bulgaria, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Panama, the Bahamas, Costa Rica and Jamaica.

Source: Travel Pulse