About 70 Tulum businesses have suspended operations in recent months, and the municipal official who keeps the registry says high commercial rents, not permits, are the main reason.
The count comes from Sergio Amílcar Canto Contreras, director general of Fiscalización, the municipal office that licenses, inspects, and collects from commercial activity in Tulum. He said most of the closures are temporary, and that several owners have already told the municipality they plan to raise their shutters again.
What makes the figure worth reading is where it does not come from. These are not businesses shut down by inspectors. By the account of the office that would have done the shutting, they closed because the lease cost more than the season could return.
Seventy closures out of 2,850 registered businesses
The municipal padrón lists roughly 2,850 registered businesses in Tulum. The 70 that have gone quiet amount to 2.4 percent of that total, a share Canto Contreras described as minor against the whole and, in most cases, not final.
That distinction matters for how the number travels. A closure in the municipal system can mean a restaurant that locked up in June and expects to be serving again by December, or a shop that will never come back. Fiscalización counts both and says the first kind dominates. The office did not release a breakdown by sector, by corridor, or by the number of workers left without a shift.
Rent, not licenses
Asked what sits behind the closures, Canto Contreras named the economic slowdown first, then the price of a commercial unit in town, then the low season now underway.
"We have had a considerable number of business closures. The atypical crisis in the municipality has led some establishments to temporarily suspend their economic activities."
He was more specific about what the closures are not. Administrative procedures, permits, and operating licenses are not the principal cause, he said. Business owners have raised the rent question with the municipality directly, and it is the lease, not the paperwork, that keeps surfacing in those conversations.
The regulator's request to commercial landlords
From that reading came an unusual appeal for a regulatory office to make. Canto Contreras called on the owners of commercial property to show more sensitivity toward their tenants and to adjust rental terms so that businesses can stay open.
Fiscalización has no power to set those prices. What it has is a public microphone and a registry that records what happens when the number on the lease outruns the number at the register.
Why the low season bites Tulum businesses harder than it used to
July, August, and September have always been the slow stretch on this coast. Canto Contreras noted that the years right after the pandemic broke that pattern, when Tulum drew visitors on a calendar that did not match the rest of the country's destinations. The traditional rhythm has since reasserted itself.
The comparison many owners are making this summer, then, is against years that were not normal. Canto Contreras argued the answer lies in leaning harder on domestic and regional visitors through the summer holiday period, and repeated the invitation for Mexican and foreign travelers to spend time in the cenotes, beaches, and recreational offerings that carry the local economy.
Most of the 70 say they will be back
Several proprietors have formally notified the municipality that they intend to reopen during the next vacation period, or once economic conditions improve. That notification carries no obligation. For now it is the clearest signal Fiscalización has that most of the 70 storefronts are pausing rather than closing for good.
Restaurateurs took their case to the mayor
The rent complaint arrives alongside a broader push from the private sector. Mayor Diego Castañón Trejo met this week with members of CANIRAC, the national restaurant chamber, who brought proposals centered on discounts to municipal fees and procedures. Canto Contreras attended, as did the heads of Tourism, Protección Civil, and the mayor's office.
Castañón said the Cabildo would sit on Monday to review and possibly approve a package of tax incentives for the summer season. In June, the same enforcement office had already floated a single-window permitting system, standardized fee tables, and temporary authorizations for new ventures at a permanent working table with local business owners.
None of that touches a lease. The variable Canto Contreras named is the one nobody at city hall controls, and no date has been set for an updated count of the closures. What has a date is Monday's session, where the municipality will decide how much of a break it is prepared to give the 2,780 businesses still open.
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