Five Tulum hotels turned off the lights, and the coast now waits for October

Five hotels on the Tulum coast have suspended operations for the low season, the newspaper Sol Quintana Roo reported this week, while hotel occupancy along that strip holds near 20 percent.

The report named no official as the source of that count and did not list the properties. The occupancy reading matches what the hotel association has been describing since May.

Behind the two numbers sits a payroll problem. At the levels the association describes, a beachfront hotel does not cover its wages, and the properties still open are spending on sargassum removal what they are not taking at the front desk. The answer so far has been to ask the banks for room to breathe and to wait for the winter calendar.

Ortiz Mena puts the drop at 10 points below last year

David Ortiz Mena, president of the Asociación de Hoteles de Tulum and of the Consejo Hotelero del Caribe Mexicano, spoke to reporters on September 10, shortly before the annual address by the municipal president, Diego Castañón Trejo.

Coastal-zone hotels are reporting occupancy below 20 percent, he said, and all-inclusive properties below 30. The average is running about 10 percentage points under the same period of 2025, and it has been low since May. "We are going to stay at these occupancy levels until October," he said.

That 20 percent is not the whole municipality. The state tourism information system, Situr, put Tulum's average at 41.5 percent for the week of August 29 to September 4, a figure that includes inland hotels. The coastal strip sits at the bottom of that average, and it carries the highest fixed costs in town.

500,000 pesos a week to clear the sand

Four days before that interview, the same association put a number on what the low season costs a beachfront property.

Some coastal hotels have operated at around 15 percent, Ortiz Mena said in remarks first reported by El Economista, and sargassum removal alone is costing individual establishments more than 500,000 pesos a week. European-plan and boutique hotels on the beach are the exposed segment. All-inclusive properties, which sell rooms and meals together, closed in June by around 40 percent.

The sand has to be cleared whether the rooms fill or not.

Ortiz Mena has attributed the fall to a stack of causes rather than one: fewer airline seats into the Mexican Caribbean at higher fares, travel patterns redrawn by the World Cup calendar, mobility complaints inside the destination, and the absence of a national tourism promotion effort since 2019. Beach hotels are also competing with more than 4,500 vacation rental units in the municipality, a supply that did not exist at this scale five years ago.

A request goes to the banks

The Asociación de Hoteles de Tulum and the Consejo Hotelero del Caribe Mexicano said in early September that they would formally ask commercial and development banks to restructure the sector's credit, with the stated aim of maintaining payrolls and financing beach cleaning through the rest of the low season.

"It is unsustainable to pay high costs for beach cleaning," Ortiz Mena said. Without backing from the banks, he added, beach hotels will struggle to absorb another low season with expensive sargassum and empty rooms.

Worse than the pandemic, says Dolores López Lira

The pressure is not confined to this municipality. Dolores López Lira, founder of Grupo Lomas, said her group is operating at about 40 percent capacity and has brought back días solidarios, a rotation that spreads reduced work among staff instead of cutting hours, for its 4,700 employees.

Her comparison was to 2020. Occupancy at these levels is worse than what the group saw during the pandemic, she said, with tax obligations that have not paused and workers who have lost the tip income that makes up part of their pay.

Tulum hotel occupancy and the flights returning on October 25

The recovery the sector describes has a start date attached, and it is an airline schedule.

Bernardo Cueto, Quintana Roo's tourism secretary, told the trade outlet Reportur on September 3 that Tulum's Felipe Carrillo Puerto airport will operate 10 airlines and 13 destinations this winter, nine international and four national, from October 25 to March 27, 2027. The international cities he listed were Calgary, Montreal, Quebec, Toronto, Newark, Dallas, Miami, Atlanta and Houston.

Official counts of the returning routes do not agree. The municipal tourism director, Haydee Hernández Pastrana, announced eight international routes in August, operated by United Airlines, Air Canada, Air Transat and WestJet. The federal tourism ministry put the figure at nine.

Ortiz Mena saw this season coming. In February, he told reporters that Tulum faced an atypical low season between September and November and cited the same cause he cites now: fewer available seats at higher prices.

What the association wants fixed before the visitors land is smaller and local. Transport comes first, and specifically an official published tariff for taxi service in Tulum, which the sector has been requesting for months.

Last December, the destination reported 75.5 percent occupancy as the year closed. That is the mark this winter gets measured against.

The first winter flight is scheduled for October 25. Between now and then, the banks have a restructuring request pending, the taxi tariff remains unpublished, and five hotels on the coast remain shut.

If you work in a Tulum hotel, has your property cut shifts or paused operations this low season? Join the conversation and share your perspective with us on Instagram and Facebook at @thetulumtimes.