Luis Riu Bertrán

Luis Riu Bertrán (20 March 1933 – 7 April 1998) was a Spanish hotelier and businessman, best known as co-founder of the RIU Hotels & Resorts chain alongside his father, Juan Riu Masmitjà. In 1953 the family acquired the Hotel San Francisco in Playa de Palma, Mallorca, which became the first hotel of the future RIU group. The following year they worked with the German travel agency Doktor Tigges-Fahrten to organize what contemporary sources describe as Spain's first charter flight aimed specifically at package tourism, linking air transport with hotel accommodation for middle-class German travellers.

From the late 1970s onwards, Luis Riu helped to formalize the long-running commercial relationship between the Riu family and the German tour operator TUI. In 1977 both parties set up Riu Hotels S.A. as a joint hotel-development and property-investment company, with 51% of the share capital held by the Riu family and 49% by TUI. In 1993, RIU and TUI created the centralized hotel-management company RIUSA II, S.A., owned 50:50 by both partners, to operate RIU-branded hotels worldwide. At the time of his death in 1998, the RIU group managed 62 hotels, and in 1993 he received the Creu de Sant Jordi from the Government of Catalonia.