Uber began operating in Tulum and Playa del Carmen

Uber in Tulum and Playa del Carmen started accepting riders on Tuesday, and the opening promotion is offering some of those first trips for 0 pesos.

The company switched on both municipalities the same day, October 20, according to reporting by Fátima Vázquez for Uno TV. It came six days after Tribuna de México reported that Uber had opened driver registration in the two towns without naming a start date.

That lands harder here than it would further up the coast. Riders in Tulum have spent three years developing an app that listed drivers in the town and sent no cars, while the price of a trip was set by a taxi union chart with no sign of state authorization.

Uber's own city page has advertised rides around Tulum 24 hours a day. A local transport guide, updated in September, still told visitors not to rely on it. Both of those were accurate until Tuesday.

Zero pesos is the promotion, not the price

Uno TV describes the free trips as the main attraction for users at the moment, and its report is explicit about what sits underneath them. How long the promotion will run and what the ordinary fares will be once it ends have not been established.

Opening offers expire. That is their function.

The Tulum Times found no published fare schedule from Uber for either municipality. For now, the price of a given route becomes visible to a rider only when the rider requests it.

60 to 80 pesos on DiDi, 150 to 200 by taxi

Mauricio Morales, a merchant in Tulum, told Uno TV that DiDi was already running trips from the town center to the archaeological zone for 60 to 80 pesos, and that a taxi on the same route could charge 150 to 200 pesos. Those figures are his account rather than a published rate. DiDi has held a state permit since July 2024, when the Instituto de Movilidad authorized four platforms.

Mayra Canul, a Tulum resident quoted in the same report, made the user's version of the argument: cheaper fares are an advantage for whoever is paying them.

Set that against what the taxi sector itself published last month. The Sindicato de Taxistas Tiburones del Caribe issued a 24-zone tariff on September 3 that prices the center to the archaeological zone at 90 pesos, up from 49 in the chart it had used since 2019. As we reported at the time, that sheet carries no agreement number, no seal, and no date of authorization from the state mobility institute.

Ninety pesos on the union's own paper, 150 to 200 reported at the curb, 60 to 80 on a competing app. The distance between those three numbers is why a ride at zero lands the way it did this week.

Brigadier Hernández waited an hour for a fare

The other side of the launch was recorded at a taxi stand. Brigadier Hernández, who drives for Tiburones del Caribe in Tulum, told Uno TV that the sector is already losing income and that he had been waiting roughly an hour without picking up a passenger.

If more platforms come in, we are going to starve.

He was speaking in Spanish, and the line above is a translation.

In Playa del Carmen, the sector Uber walked into on the same morning is considerably larger. The Sindicato de Taxistas Lázaro Cárdenas del Río has more than 3,000 taxis registered, according to Tribuna de México.

The Cancún model arrives with bonuses of 2,000 pesos

What opened this week follows the path Uber took in Cancún, where the company and the Andrés Quintana Roo union signed a collaboration agreement in December 2023, after years of litigation and documented attacks on platform drivers. The negotiations were conducted with the state government acting as an intermediary.

Uber now reports more than 2,200 taxi drivers registered on its app in Cancún, roughly 18 percent of the 12,000 operators the union is estimated to have. Registration in the app is not the same thing as a verified public concession, a distinction Tribuna de México draws in its own reporting of the figure.

The recruitment terms reached Tulum before the service did. Uber is offering up to 2,000 pesos to taxi drivers who complete their first ten trips and 1,000 pesos to motorcyclists who complete five, with additional bonuses for referring other drivers. The call covers motorcycles as well as cars.

The legal question was settled well before any of that. A federal court in Cancún ruled in January 2023 that the company did not require a concession to operate in Quintana Roo. The state then authorized DiDi, InDrive, Muévete and Ola taxi, while one platform remained in litigation.

Uber in Tulum has not touched the airport question

Airports answer to a different authority than streets do. In November 2025, the federal transport ministry clarified that the Quintana Roo ruling does not reach federal zones, and that article 8 of the Ley de Caminos, Puentes y Autotransporte Federal requires a federal permit to work at an airport. That clarification was written about Cancún.

Cancún is also where the exception lives. Uber announced that from July 30, 2025, passengers arriving at Cancún International could book a trip from inside the terminal, the first arrangement of its kind at a Mexican airport.

Nothing published this week says whether Tulum's airport is included in the new service. A visitor landing at Felipe Carrillo Puerto should arrange the ride as they have since the terminal opened, and treat the app as a possibility rather than a plan.

Hernández will be back at the stand when the promotion ends, and so will the chart his union published in September. The number worth writing down is what Uber charges for the center-to-the-ruins run on the first day those trips stop being free, and nothing published so far says when that day is.

Did a car actually arrive when you opened the app in Tulum this week, and what did the trip cost you? Join the conversation and share your perspective with us on Instagram and Facebook at @thetulumtimes.