"The downfall of Tulum is here." "There's no work in the summer, how can we live?" "I'm burning cash to stay open." Comments like these are becoming more common across town, and they are heartbreaking.
I hear how tired we all are. Tired of the negativity, tired of having no clear plan, tired of watching our city dragged through the mud. I cannot fix the police shaking down tourists. What I can do is offer three changes that would start turning Tulum around.
When I began discussing how to fix Tulum with friends and business owners, the answer I heard again and again was that we only need to fix the beach. Fix the beach and the tourists come back. Respectfully, I disagree, and strongly.
Pour everything into the beach and we enter a fight we lose. Plenty of year round beach towns already have the basics of a real city in place. So what if we flipped it? What if Tulum became a year round town of cenotes, lagoons, wellness, and jungle that happens to have a wonderful seasonal beach?
Fixing Tulum starts with the lights, not the beach
Electricity has become synonymous with safety around the world. Here, water is generally only accessible with electricity, because it takes a pump. Tourists need power to rinse off the heat before a night out, take a nap, or eat where they want. Families need it for kids who cannot sleep in the heat, for baths, for warming a bottle at 2 a.m. Digital nomads need it to work and take the meetings that pay for their life here. Businesses need it to earn and to meet customer expectations.
When the power goes, all the security electricity brings suddenly flees. Where is there a working bathroom? Where will dinner come from? How do you charge a phone to check in for a flight? How does anyone sleep in a 30 C hotbox?
That is the opposite of a vacation, and it makes digital nomads think twice about staying long term.
In local WhatsApp chats, the moment the power drops the questions start. Was this outage planned? How long will it last? Who else is out? Where can I go?
Electricity in Mexico is federally provided, but here in Tulum the problem is more local, and therefore more fixable. I have watched CFE workers place a used transformer on the poles. Was that all the budget allowed? Are we simply scraping by? Given the scale of investment in Tulum, my understanding is that the issue here is largely grift.
If that is the problem, the city can fix grift. It will not be fun, but grift is a choice, and choices can be changed.
There is also a private option. Many apartments in Tulum have solar, but almost all of it is tied to the city grid. When the grid dies, the panels die with it. Feeding power back to the city lowers monthly bills, but it does not deliver stability.
So let buildings store power in batteries, and let them market it. A building in Tulum that could honestly advertise "always has power" would fill up. Every time I visit Digital Jungle during an outage, the place is packed, and they keep only wifi running, not lights or air conditioning.
When people lose electricity, they feel unsafe. That is the cost. People do not want to feel unsafe, businesses cannot earn, tourists' plans fall apart, and remote workers start counting how often it happens and whether they will miss something that matters.
A large share of residents leave Tulum every summer rather than deal with it.
Ecotourists, families, influencers, and digital nomads all need power. Whatever kind of visitor Tulum's future brings, this comes first. Plumbing, roads, sargassum, all of it can wait.
Stop building, start filling
Tulum is overbuilding.
Everywhere you look, half finished apartments line the streets, many of them never to be completed. Jungle is bulldozed and haphazard roads are cut in. For whom? There is no one to fill the units. Entire developments sit with only their model homes built, month after month, and buyers are scarce.
Prices have dropped 15 to 30 percent and there still are not enough people. I do not know of a single neighborhood or building that is full. RivieraMayaCozy reported a 59.4 percent occupancy rate in January, our busiest month, followed by 34 percent in September.
It is time to pause construction, at least for now.
- Empty inventory helps no one.
- Half built shells house no tourists and pay no taxes. They tell visitors the city is coming apart.
- Tulum sells itself as eco conscious, so the people who come here tend to care about the environment. They want jungle, not a trash filled construction site.
- Every new building taxes the infrastructure that already fails. Power cuts out, water shuts off, and the city has more to maintain, poorly, over time.
My proposal is simple. Only apartment buildings already approved by the end of 2026 may continue within Tulum's limits. After that, no new ground broken inside Tulum for four years or more.
The top one percent may still buy their way into quiet exceptions. That is frustrating. But in general, construction would be confined to sites already underway, which adds value to existing properties and breaks the cycle of decaying, abandoned shells.
It is time for Tulum to think long term. If we pull back today, we come back stronger. Is that not worth it?
Peace and quiet are the new luxury
In 2017, Tulum was launched overnight into influencer culture when electronic festivals were pushed out of Playa del Carmen and moved here. Then in 2020 and 2021, it became the refuge of partiers fleeing a shut down world, unable to reach their usual destinations.
It was a modern gold rush, opportunity on every corner with no institutions to slow anyone down. A sleepy town that had grown quietly for decades suddenly exploded. We got excited. Who would not?
But we can say it plainly now. The influencer tourist has left. Somewhere along the way, Tulum decided this had to be its traveler, and it has been chasing that ghost ever since.
The influencer needs this year's hidden gem, the most exclusive corner. Tulum is neither.
In a world obsessed with screens and starved for real gatherings, Tulum offers something different, a safe adventure. We have a strong community, endless events, jungle, restaurants, grocery stores, fast internet, an airport, and a life that exists outside of tech.
We are slow travel at its finest.
Tulum has always been about freedom. Freedom to relax without city noise. To sleep early for the sunrise or dance until late. To learn to ride a moto and spend the day at a cenote. Freedom to breathe instead of consume.
In May, I was startled to see American Airlines advertising Tulum in a small, out of the way American city. "TUL to Tulum Ruins, only one stop away." The airline did not lead with beach clubs or luxury. It led with authenticity and adventure. The market is already willing to sell Tulum. American Airlines simply wants to fill a route it already flies. Decide who Tulum is for, draw them in, and the market will notice who is booking and bring more. We do not have to do all the marketing ourselves. We just have to look at who is actually coming, and choose.
Who has stood the test of time in Tulum? Which visitor actually makes sense here?
Remote workers could fill the empty units
In the United States there is a relocation program called Tulsa Remote, run by the same city now advertising Tulum. Tulsa is not a tourist destination. It sits in what Americans call the flyover states. The program still became a runaway success.
Remote workers who meet the requirements are paid to move to Tulsa for a year. Roughly 70 percent are still there after their first year, and members have generated about 878 million dollars in local income since 2018. According to an analysis by the Upjohn Institute, the program returns about four dollars for every dollar spent, well above the usual two to one for traditional business incentives.
People want a 15 minute drive to anywhere, a slower pace, money that stretches further, and a real community. Tulum has all of that, plus cenotes, lagoons, diverse food, festivals, and world class wellness.
The large buildings have empty inventory and no obvious way to fill it. So bring remote workers in to fill it. Mexicans, Americans, Canadians, any of them would be a win. Mexican nationals would pay taxes to Tulum, which makes them the strongest win of all.
Pair the program with a cowork space that stays online during outages, and this is something Tulum could launch now to start filling a single building. Nothing like it has been tried in Mexico. Imagine the publicity, and the pitch. Tired of your 8 to 8, the pressure to have kids, and living to buy an overpriced house in neighborhoods that all look the same? Come live.
I have a program proposal ready for any interested large complex.
Wellness adventurers already come here
Last year, Tulum's marathon was a success no one expected. Some 2,500 runners filled the streets. I met visitors from France who came to run through jungle, then unwind at the beach and the cenotes. The race had problems, and I hope we fix them this year. It could become big.
Tulum sits at the top of every best of list for cave diving. Our 1,500 kilometers of cenotes are something only this place can offer the world. I have met people from Israel who moved here for six months to get certified, and high school science teachers who return every summer and spring break. Cenotes are magic, and they make us unique in the Caribbean.
Tulum also has a remarkable run club community. Run Tulum counts more than 1,000 members, and Saturday runs draw 250 people on average, one of the most consistent turnouts in town, and something the city only has to start advertising. Run clubs are booming worldwide. Let us build a sister club with a city in the United States or Europe.
Every Tuesday and Thursday morning, a mountain biking club rides out to Sian Ka'an or Parque del Jaguar. No tourist even knows it exists. We have calisthenics taught by former Olympians, Muay Thai gyms with world class coaches, and pilates led by division heads of global brands. Where is any of this advertised?
This is Tulum. A wellness community unlike any I have seen anywhere, one you have to live here a while to even find.
As a luxury party beach town, Tulum competes with Cancún, Playa del Carmen, and Punta Cana, and I would add Puerto Vallarta and Cabo, and we lose on price and reliability. Read the Tulum Times piece "Tulum Did Not Fall" for that argument. Pivot to an adventure and wellness town, and our competition becomes Nosara or Santa Teresa in Costa Rica, or Lake Atitlán in Guatemala. We are far closer to the United States. We are not short on beauty or year round activity. We are just too fixed on the seasonal beach traveler.
So let us focus on the natural magic of Tulum. Whitewashed hotels and plated luxury food are not Tulum. Tulum is an adventure, a small city with an international pulse, the place where you can feel good, make friends, explore, and still go home to modern comforts. Think bed and breakfast hiking, not backpacking. It speaks to the person who lives in a city and has not truly lived in a while.
One small change at a time
That is it. As the Tulum Times put it, Tulum did not fall on its own. It was pushed, one small failure at a time. The good news is that this is exactly how you put a city back together, one small change at a time. Keep the lights, water, and internet on. Stop building empty buildings. Fill what we already have with people who stay all year.
Let us focus on what we do better than any city in Mexico. We have the community, the cenotes, the lagoons, the jungle, the wellness, the adventure, and an unbeatable location. The beach will have its season, like most beach towns do. Let us build for the year.
Would a year round Tulum built around cenotes, wellness, and remote workers serve the city better than chasing the seasonal beach crowd? Join the conversation and share your perspective with us on Instagram and Facebook at @thetulumtimes.