The Jaguar Park wall comes down this week, and eight winter routes are promised

Remodeling work starts this week at Parque del Jaguar, and the federal tourism ministry says the perimeter wall will go with it permanently, two years after the park opened behind it.

Josefina Rodríguez Zamora, head of Sectur, presented the work as part of Plan Tulum Renace and described it as the product of agreements reached in five working sessions with the business sector and residents. In the same statement, she confirmed the return of eight international air routes to Tulum's airport for the winter season.

The announcement comes in a year when Tulum's hotels emptied faster than those of its competitors on the same coast. Between January and May, the state tourism information system put the town's average occupancy at 69.88 percent, against 76.86 percent in the same months of 2025. Cancún lost half a point across that period, Playa del Carmen 3.3 and the state average 1.42. Tulum lost 6.98.

Tulum Renace starts with a wall coming down

The wall has been the physical center of the argument over the park since it opened in 2024. It stands at the traditional entrance and cuts the pedestrian line that residents and visitors used to reach the archaeological zone and the beaches behind it.

What Sectur said this week and what the federal government said in July are not worded the same way. On July 17, at a press conference in Tulum, President Claudia Sheinbaum announced that the existing wall would be replaced by an arch to restore the visual and pedestrian connection to the archaeological site and the beaches, with military engineers carrying out the work. This week, the language is the definitive elimination of the perimeter wall.

Those are two different jobs. Sectur has published no drawing, no budget, and no completion date for either.

The July package carried the measures that got the headlines: free entry to Parque del Jaguar for Mexican visitors, an archaeological zone ticket of 80 pesos for nationals and 265 for foreign visitors, an electric mobility system inside the park, and a parking lot at the south access meant to leave visitors on foot near the artisans who sell there.

Eight routes, or nine, or 13 destinations

Rodríguez Zamora confirmed that United Airlines, Air Canada, Air Transat, and WestJet are restoring eight international routes to Felipe Carrillo Puerto International Airport. They restart gradually between the end of October and December, run until March 2027, and connect Tulum directly with New York, Toronto, Montreal, Quebec, and Calgary.

The municipal tourism office said the same thing five weeks ago. On August 5, its director, Haydee Hernández Pastrana, gave the same four airlines, the same five cities and the same figure of eight, after a meeting with representatives of the terminal.

The state government counts differently. On September 3, Quintana Roo tourism secretary Bernardo Cueto told the trade outlet Reportur that the airport will run 10 airlines and 13 destinations this winter, nine international and four domestic, between October 25 and March 27. His list of international cities adds Dallas, Miami, Atlanta, and Houston to the five in the federal version, and it lists Newark, New Jersey, where the federal and municipal versions say New York.

Some of the gap is a unit of counting. A route and a destination are not the same object, and a city served by two airlines can be one destination and two routes. The rest of it has not been explained by anyone. No office has published frequencies, aircraft, or a schedule, which is what turns an announced route into a seat somebody can buy.

56.4 percent occupancy, and hotels that closed for the summer

The recovery Sectur is describing starts from a low base. During the week of August 15 to 21, the state tourism information system reported Tulum at 56.4 percent occupancy, just above the Mexican Caribbean average of 56.1 percent and below Cancún, Holbox, Isla Mujeres, and Costa Mujeres.

The Asociación de Hoteles de Tulum reported a drop of more than 20 percent across May, June and July compared with the same months of 2025, with stretches of the coastal strip down by 15 percent. Some hotels closed. Others began weighing whether to operate seasonally and shut down during the emptiest months, and in August the association asked the federal government to open credit restructuring schemes with commercial and development banks so payrolls could survive the low season.

David Ortiz Mena, president of the association, said this week that he expects a sustained recovery in occupancy toward the close of the year, and a favorable end-of-year season for the local industry, despite fewer airline seats nationally at higher prices. He has described that squeeze as a national problem reaching Puerto Vallarta and Los Cabos as well as this coast.

Ortiz Mena wants the music off the sand

The association's second message this week had nothing to do with the wall or the flights.

Ortiz Mena called for limits on mass music and wellness events staged along the beach strip and proposed moving them to venues with sufficient capacity, away from the sand, where attendance can be controlled, traffic does not seize up, and decibel levels do not carry into fragile ground.

It is an argument he has been making all year. In January, after complaints about a run of large parties, he said such events carry consequences and that the destination has to decide whether they are worth it, while noting that Quintana Roo already has venues built for crowds, the Zamna complex among them. The line he draws is geographic. Last week, he said that bringing recognized names to Tulum outside the high season helps, as long as the event is not on the coast.

That distinction is about to be tested by the plan itself. The property the federal government has placed at the center of its cultural strategy, the UMusic Hotel and Beach Club Tulum reported by The Tulum Times in August, opens in the first week of December on the coastal strip, with 57 rooms, a beach club for 800 people and a creative hub built for concerts and film production.

Sectur has not said when work at Parque del Jaguar will finish, or whether the arch announced in July is still part of it. The first flights of the winter schedule are due on October 25, seven weeks out, and the hotel association expects the occupancy line to turn in the first half of that month. Until then, the wall is the only piece of the plan anyone can watch being moved.

Does taking down the wall at Parque del Jaguar change anything for you, or does Tulum's recovery depend entirely on the flights due in October? Join the conversation and share your perspective with us on Instagram and Facebook at @thetulumtimes.