Tulum business owners ask landlords to cut commercial rents

Business owners in Tulum are asking landlords to lower commercial rents, saying some storefronts still cost more than 40,000 pesos a month in the emptiest weeks of the year.

The appeal came from Valeria Blanco, a Tulum businesswoman who has been one of the most visible local voices on what the destination charges. High rents are among the main obstacles merchants face right now, she said, with the pressure heaviest on locales along the main avenues and even heavier on the coast road, where a monthly rent can outrun what the business takes in.

The timing is the argument. Tulum is in the middle of its slowest stretch of the year; roughly 70 businesses have already stopped operating in 2026 by the municipality's own count, and a lease signed when the town was full does not renegotiate itself when the town empties.

"It has to be a complete readjustment," Blanco says

She put the ask in the first person, aimed at owners as a group and not at a named landlord. "We have a weak economy, we have low tourism, but the other reality is that rents are very high, and until we as owners understand that there has to be a complete readjustment, this is going to stay very complicated," she said.

Her second point widens the target. The adjustment should not stop at commercial locales, she said, but also extend to housing rents and lodging rates, with the stated aim of a balance that lets businesses keep operating and the jobs attached to them.

She also framed the slowdown as bigger than one town, affecting other destinations and sectors, and said the call has to involve the whole business community rather than just one group within it. "It is time that we, as business owners and property owners, take stock and make an adjustment to the cost of rents," she said.

Sergio Canto Contreras made the same request in July

The appeal is not new, and its first version came from city hall.

Sergio Canto Contreras, Tulum's director general of inspection, said in late July that around 70 businesses in the municipality had lowered their shutters during the year. Set against a municipal register of roughly 2,850 businesses, that is about 2.4 percent. Most were temporary suspensions, he said, with owners telling the municipality they intended to reopen for the next holiday period or once conditions improved.

He was specific about the cause. He ruled out permits and licensing as the driver, instead pointing to the cost of the leases and asking commercial property owners for more flexibility so tenants could stay. Poresto reported that the businesses that stopped operating in that stretch included names with years in the town, among them Road Tulum, Eufemia and Bonita.

Occupancy near 56 percent, rents that did not move

The season Blanco is describing has numbers attached.

For the week of August 15 to 21, the Quintana Roo tourism information system put Tulum's hotel occupancy at 56.4 percent, a fraction above the state average of 56.1, with the Mexican Caribbean as a whole already under 60 percent. Canto Contreras placed the traditional low season in July, August, and September.

Housing prices have not tracked the season down either. In our own count of the 113 long-term listings advertised for Tulum on September 2, the average asking rent was 19,066 pesos per month, excluding utilities. Commercial leases are harder to measure because storefront rents are not advertised in the same way, which is why the 40,000-peso figure Blanco cited serves as an example rather than a market average.

The Jaguar Park fee fell in July, by decree

Blanco's argument leans on a precedent six weeks old, and it explains why the appeal is aimed at private landlords rather than at the government.

President Claudia Sheinbaum presented Plan Tulum Renace at her morning conference on July 17, and the new fees were published in the Diario Oficial de la Federación, effective July 20. Entry to Parque del Jaguar became free for Mexican visitors and 100 pesos for foreign ones. Access to Parque Nacional Tulum and the archaeological zone was unified at 80 pesos for Mexicans, Monday through Saturday, and 165 pesos for foreigners, with residents of the municipality entering free. The federal government said the change followed working sessions with state and municipal authorities and representatives of the tourism sector, who had argued that the cost of entry was discouraging Mexican visitors.

Blanco had been part of that pressure. In May, she launched a Change.org petition seeking a legal route to separate Jaguar Park from the archaeological zone, arguing that the combined cost had made a visit out of reach for Mexican families. In July, after the decree, she was still telling reporters that, in practice, reaching public beaches such as Playa Pescadores required a reservation. Her position now is that the sector asked the government to bring the cost down, the government did so, and property owners are the ones who have not moved.

No rule can bring Tulum's commercial rents down

This is where the appeal runs out of leverage.

A commercial lease in Tulum is a private contract between two parties. No municipal or state mechanism was announced alongside the call, no landlord association in the municipality has answered it publicly, and the appeal carries no figure of its own, no percentage and no deadline by which anyone is asked to do anything.

What it has instead is arithmetic. A landlord holding out for the old rate through the quiet months is betting on December, when the high season starts and visitors return. A tenant who cannot reach December closes in September.

Our earlier reporting covers the cost pressures already squeezing Tulum's restaurants and small businesses, as well as where the Tulum real estate market is heading.

City hall has a way of counting the answer. Canto Contreras said most of the roughly 70 businesses that went dark this year told the municipality they meant to reopen for the coming holiday season. The municipal register will show, sometime after December, how many of them did.

Should landlords in Tulum cut commercial rents to keep shops open through the low season, or is that risk part of running a business here? Join the conversation and share your perspective with us on Instagram and Facebook at @thetulumtimes.