Tulum hotel closures reach 900 rooms

Tulum hotel closures have taken about 900 rooms out of service, the head of Mexico's national hotel association said this week, after a stretch of weak domestic and international demand.

Miguel Ángel Fong González, president of the Asociación Mexicana de Hoteles y Moteles, told Excélsior that the closed inventory belongs to several hotel brands and ranges from independent properties of 15 to 20 rooms to developments with more than 200 rooms. "The situation in Tulum is complicated," he said, adding that the effort to bring the destination back has to continue.

Those rooms are coming off the market weeks before the season Tulum counts on. Coastal hotels spent September at below 20 percent occupancy; the airport has lost Aeroméxico and has a date with Volaris; and the fourth quarter is now being asked to carry the whole year.

Tulum hotel closures run from 15 rooms to 200

State tourism figures from the start of the year put Quintana Roo at 139,949 hotel rooms, with Tulum accounting for about 9 percent, close to 12,600. By that arithmetic, the rooms now shut account for something near 7 percent of everything the municipality has to sell.

The count itself is not settled. David Ortiz Mena, president of the Asociación de Hoteles de Tulum and of the Consejo Hotelero del Caribe Mexicano, put the figure closer to 1,000 rooms in remarks to Uno TV on October 6. Neither association has published a property-by-property list, and the two numbers come from different sets of members.

Both rest on the same occupancy line. Ortiz Mena said in September that coastal hotels were running below 20 percent and all-inclusive properties below 30 percent, roughly 10 points under the same weeks of 2025, a level the sector has carried since May. For the Mexican Caribbean as a whole, the Sistema de Información Turística de Quintana Roo recorded 46 percent occupancy in the week of September 26 to October 2, the lowest reading of the year.

Aeroméxico leaves September 30; Volaris goes January 7

Aeroméxico announced on September 27 that it would suspend all flights to the Felipe Carrillo Puerto airport after September 30, calling the move temporary and framing it as a way to make better use of its route network. Passengers already booked were offered itinerary changes through Cancún or refunds.

Volaris followed four days later. The carrier said it will stop flying to and from Tulum on January 7, 2027, and closed ticket sales for later dates that same weekend. It pointed to load factors below expectations, the increase in the airport use fee, the cost of jet fuel and air navigation services, and the 35 percent rise in the non-resident fee set for 2027. Tickets already issued are good until that date.

Viva Aerobus stays. The low-cost carrier kept its Tulum schedule when Aeroméxico announced its exit, including three weekly flights from the Felipe Ángeles airport, and the foreign airlines already flying into the terminal, among them American, Delta, and Air Transat, held their operations unchanged.

The passenger count explains both departures. The airport handled 583,408 passengers across 4,758 operations between January and August, a 33.6 percent drop compared with the same period in 2025.

Seven winter routes land anyway

While the Mexican carriers step back, four foreign ones are coming in. The federal tourism ministry announced on September 13 that Tulum will have seasonal service to five cities this winter, operated by Air Canada, Air Transat, WestJet, and United Airlines, with seven services and up to 10 weekly frequencies.

• Montreal: Air Canada on Thursdays from October 29 to April 8, Air Transat on Sundays from October 25 to April 18.
• Toronto: Air Canada on Sundays from October 25 to April 11, WestJet on Thursdays and Saturdays from October 31 to April 24.
• Calgary: WestJet on Thursdays and Saturdays starting October 29.
• Quebec: Air Transat on Sundays starting October 25.
• Newark: United Airlines on Thursdays and Sundays from December 17 to January 24.

The first of those arrivals touches down on October 25, a week before November, the month hoteliers have dubbed the point at which occupancy and rates should turn.

The local charges hoteliers want reviewed

To cushion the hit on lodging businesses and the suppliers that depend on them, the association's Tulum chapter has been meeting with municipal, state, and federal authorities, Fong said. The item on the table is the set of local fees and charges that contribute to what it costs to operate a hotel room.

Luis Manuel Rivera, who directs the consultancy Powerpeople México and advises hotels and restaurants on business models, reads the final stretch of the year the same way, with a caution attached. Tulum can recover tourism activity now, he wrote in an analysis, but airline adjustments, operating costs, and environmental pressure make that improvement hard to hold through 2027.

Reservations are filling the December book

Fong expects the quarter to close better than the previous year. A large volume of reservations is coming in, he told Excélsior, enough to soften the accumulated drop, though he was direct about the limit of that arithmetic: seven or eight weak months are being measured against three good ones, and the gap does not close.

What nobody has put a date on is the reopening of the 900 rooms. The calendar that will answer the question is already fixed. The first winter flights land on October 25, United starts its Newark service on December 17, and Volaris flies its last Tulum route on January 7.

Do you expect Tulum's winter bookings to bring those closed hotel rooms back into service? Join the conversation and share your perspective with us on Instagram and Facebook at @thetulumtimes.