Riu Palace Antillas and Riu Palace Aruba welcomed guests to celebrate the New Year with traditional celebrations on Friday, January 1, 2016.
In accordance to the island tradition, Arubans celebrate New Year’s Day with a special musical offering known as Dande. This tradition is celebrated each year to wish friends and family a happy new year filled with blessings, health and prosperity. This year, Riu Palace Antillas and Riu Palace Aruba welcomed the New Year by showering blessings on guests and hotel employees.
Guests were then invited to participate in the traditional New Year’s Plunge into the Caribbean Sea. Derived from the Netherlands, this year’s plunge welcomed swimmers to race into the ocean to seek eternal fame. Following the plunge, guests enjoyed a steamy cup of Unox pea soup with sausage.
Pictured here are the hotel employees and guests who celebrated the New Year with RIU Hotels & Resorts.
About RIU: The international RIU chain was founded in Mallorca by the Riu family in 1953 as a small holiday firm and is still owned by the family’s third generation. The company specializes in holiday resorts and over 70 percent of its establishments offer its acclaimed all-inclusive by RIU service. With the inauguration of its first city hotel in 2010, RIU is expanding its range of products with its own line of city hotels called Riu Plaza. RIU Hotels & Resorts now has more than 100 hotels in 19 countries, which welcome over four million guests a year and provide jobs for a total of 27,813 employees. RIU is currently the world’s 30th ranked chain, one of the Caribbean’s most popular, the largest in Spain in terms of revenue and the third largest in number of rooms.