A Tulum Hotel Room Falls to 1,155 Pesos a Night, Until December 21

The new Tulum hotel rates published by Grupo Mundo Maya start at 1,155 pesos a night before taxes, the lowest figure in the state-owned group's seven-hotel network.

The schedule splits the calendar in two. Low season runs from August 12 to December 20, 2026. High season covers the final 11 days of the year, December 21 through December 31, when the same rooms are priced roughly double.

The discount arrived the same week Quintana Roo's tourism secretary, Bernardo Cueto Riestra, put Tulum's hotel occupancy at about 15%, a level he described as the lowest the destination has recorded. Private operators in the same municipality are already discounting, and several have closed their doors for the season.

1,155 pesos at the airport, 1,543 pesos in town

Hotel Mundo Maya Aeropuerto Tulum, beside Felipe Carrillo Puerto International Airport, carries the lower of the two rates at 1,155.60 pesos a night through December 20. Hotel Mundo Maya Tulum is set at 1,543 pesos for the same window. Neither figure includes taxes.

The distance between the two widens once the holiday pricing kicks in. In low season, the town hotel costs about 34% more than the airport one. From December 21 it costs about 60% more.

December 21 nearly doubles both figures

Between December 21 and December 31, the airport hotel is priced at 2,080.08 pesos per night, and Hotel Mundo Maya Tulum at 3,332.88 pesos per night, the highest high-season rate anywhere in the group. That is an increase of 80% at the airport property and 116% at the one in town, applied to an 11-night window.

Sectur signed off on rates from Palenque to Chichén Itzá

The schedule was announced jointly with the federal Tourism Secretariat and applies to all seven hotels the group operates across four states. The low season rates, before taxes, run as follows:

• Tulum Aeropuerto, Quintana Roo: 1,155.60 pesos
• Nuevo Uxmal, Yucatán: 1,389 pesos
• Edzná, Campeche: 1,466 pesos
• Tulum, Quintana Roo: 1,543 pesos
• Chichén Itzá, Yucatán: 1,668 pesos
• Palenque, Chiapas: 1,761 pesos
• Calakmul, Campeche: 1,850 pesos

Grupo Mundo Maya is the commercial name of GAFSACOMM, the state company whose majority shareholder is the Defense Ministry. The same operator runs the Maya Train, the airport most Tulum visitors fly into, and Parque del Jaguar. In a municipality where the public sector already controls the arrival point and the main archaeological attraction, it now competes on room price with the hotels that depend on both.

Occupancy near 15%, the lowest the state has recorded

Cueto Riestra said this week that Tulum was running at roughly 15% occupancy, compared with 30% in Playa del Carmen. He attributed the drop to the atypical sargassum season and to airlines trimming frequencies into the Mexican Caribbean as fuel costs rose.

The slide is not new. Between January and May, Tulum averaged 69.88% occupancy, compared with 76.86% in the same months of 2025, according to the state tourism information system. The statewide average fell 1.42 points over that period. Tulum fell 6.98.

Two Tulum hotel rates in a market already discounting

David Ortiz Mena, president of the Tulum Hotel Association and of the Mexican Caribbean Hotel Council, said occupancy in May, June, and July ran more than 20% below the same months a year earlier. Some hotels have already closed. Others are considering operating only during the high season and closing for the rest of the year.

Cost explains most of that. Sargassum removal has cost more than 500,000 pesos per week at some properties, Ortiz Mena said, and the Mexican Caribbean lost close to 9% of its airline seats this summer, partly due to the bankruptcy of a U.S. carrier. Coastal and downtown hotels reported occupancy no higher than 40%.

Grupo Mundo Maya has its own version of the problem. Federal Tourism Secretary Josefina Rodríguez said in June 2025 that the target for the group's hotels was 60% occupancy. El Universal reported in November 2025 that the government had not released detailed occupancy figures for the properties, in contrast with the passenger numbers it publishes for the Maya Train.

The recovery hoteliers expect starts in late October

Ortiz Mena expects August and September to stay weak, with the first signs of recovery in the second half of October. He has also said the winter forecast is better than last year's, on the condition that the destination repairs what visitors complain about, mobility and signage among them.

The low-season rate holds for two months past that October mark. The next fixed date on the schedule is December 21, when both Tulum rooms move to holiday pricing and the cheaper of the two passes 2,000 pesos a night. Neither Grupo Mundo Maya nor Sectur has said what will happen to the rates if occupancy numbers do not move by then.

Does a 1,155 peso room bring visitors back to Tulum, or does the destination need more than a discount? Join the conversation and share your perspective with us on Instagram and Facebook at @thetulumtimes.