Tulum was supposed to be a monster. Leading up to the new airport’s opening up to international travel in March of this year, airlines began to step on top of each to see who could announce the most new service. After the first summer, the airlines have changed their tune. Now they’re just hoping this market might work better in winter, but some are already hedging their bets.
Tulum’s airport sits about 75 miles as the crow flies to the southwest of Cancún, a good two hour drive by road. Of course, most of the people going to the region are visiting Cancún or the Riviera Maya resorts that dot the coast all the way down toward Tulum. Tulum itself is a sleepy but growing town of around 50,000 people. At least, it was 50,000 in 2020 which was 65 percent above 2010 so it’s probably more now. There are also seasonal visitors that can swell the population.
Tulum has its locals, sure, but it also has a lot of expats looking to live well on the cheap. There is a sizable band of hippies that inhabit the area. Most importantly, Tulum was a major Mayan city with some impressive ruins in the area that are worth visiting.
The problem, of course, is that most people who are flying in are going to find Cancún’s airport more convenient. On top of that, even if Tulum is more convenient, it has fewer flights to fewer destinations… and an uphill battle to convince people to use it. That’s doubly true since it’s a new airport that only opened in late 2023. Most people are used to flying into Cancún.
The nascent market from the US to Tulum peaked in July 2024 with more than 53,000 seats scheduled between American, Delta, United, and JetBlue. (This doesn’t include Spirit’s planned flying which never came to fruition.)
Schedule Seats US to Tulum by Month
Data via Cirium
During that month, the loads weren’t terrible. According to T-100 data via Cirium, JetBlue was the laggard at 77.7 percent followed by American at 81 percent, United at 83.1 percent, and Delta at 83.5 percent. That might not sound bad, but compare it to Cancún where those airlines all filled more than 90 percent of their seats, and it puts Tulum in a different light.
ARC/BSP fare data shows that fares were lower in Tulum than Cancún across the board. For American and JetBlue, they weren’t much lower, but Delta and United showed pretty big dips. In other words, there is a market for Tulum in summer but not enough for the capacity that was poured into it.
You might think Tulum would do better in winter when cold weather people are fleeing south, but the airlines aren’t going to take that chance. This month, December, is the busiest of the entire winter with just a little more than 41,000 seats. No other month is above 38,000.
This isn’t just a reduction in frequency and gauge but routes are ending left and right. Take a look:
- American ends Charlotte in February, though I imagine if it succeeds this winter, it could come back seasonally
- JetBlue made JFK winter-only
- United quickly pulled out of LAX, and just this week it made Chicago and Newark winter-only. (It did boost Houston from 1x to 2x daily during summer to compensate.)
- Spirit never started its planned flight from Fort Lauderdale, and it probably won’t.
The only US carrier not to make changes has been Delta, but that was an airline that approached this conservatively. It entered with 1x weekly winter-only service from Detroit and Minneapolis/St Paul in addition to the obligatory daily Atlanta flight.
It’s very early for next summer, but as of now, there are about half the number of departures scheduled from the US to Tulum compared to this summer. That might be about right.
US carriers should probably have looked toward Canada where those airlines seem to have done this right.
Schedule Seats Canada to Tulum by Month
Data via Cirium
The Canadians waited before putting any capacity into Tulum this past summer, other than a little Air Canada flying. But they have taken a bigger bet in winter when Canadians all want to leave the country to warm up.
With the exception of WestJet’s flight from its Calgary home, all the Canadian flying is coming from Ontario and Québec. That’s where demand will be most likely to originate.
After winter, flying will disappear once again, mostly. Sure, Sunwing currently has 5x weekly scheduled next summer from Montréal, but a) Sunwing won’t exist next summer when it will have been folded into WestJet completely, and b) Sunwing likes to file all kinds of crazy stuff and then reverse course every other week. It’s maddening. But Air Canada already learned it wasn’t worth flying in summer after its experience this year.
With summer having been a dud, we now wait to see if Tulum will have more staying power in winter. It is a far cry from Cancún which takes loads of beach-hungry tourists year-round. Tulum has potential, but airlines got way ahead of where they should have been.
46 comments on “Tulum Falls Flat After Its First Summer”
Bonus points to your cartographer.
Cutting routes obviously meant they did not do well financially.
The Caribbean and Mexico/Central America leisure peaks in the winter and yet alot of carriers threw capacity into Tulum in the summer when those aircraft clearly could have been better used in domestic service.
There were a number of airlines, really two, AA and UA, that put an excess of capacity in Tulum from multiple hubs and they are the ones that are pulling back. Most of the capacity adds last year and the capacity cuts this year come from them.
Tulum is still a young market but does not need daily year round service from multiple hubs.
AMLO loves to build airports that nobody wants to fly to or from
Wonder what’s going to happen once the redux administration returns. I don’t think it’s going to look all that great for international travel.
Shame really–Tulum prices lower than Cancun. Could it be some of these ‘agents’ (I use that term loosely as anyone can be a travel agent these days. $39/month gets you in the door) and don’t know to offer Tulum has an alternative?
Claire – There could be a packaging aspect to it, but I bet a lot of this is direct-booked anyway. Either way, there is a fair bit of muscle memory in just looking at CUN and not bothering with TQO because people — whether agents or travelers themselves — don’t think about it.
The muscle memory for sure. I looked up flights to CUN recently and I did not check TQO at all. Tulum may benefit from renaming the airport to Tulum Cancun Riveria Maya airport or something.
San Francisco Bay Tulum Airport? Has a nice ring to it.
Lack of proximate land arrangements dooms this type of ‘destination’, mostly a diversion, until the hoped-for hotel development boom catches up.
The hotel development boom has mostly stalled out due to land disputes over beachfront land. There have been a handful of hotel evictions every year, and it extremely difficult for a developer to have certainty of title to the land. There is no title insurance available in the way that we’d expect in the US.
In that environment, there is an upper-bound on how much money any reasonable developer will put into hotel development (unless they are extremely well-connected politically). There will continue to be lots of mom-and-pop operations, but we won’t see anything like the scale of development at Cancun or Riviera Maya in the current environment.
The Sian Kaan biosphere reserve also places a hard southern boundary on development, so there is actually not much undeveloped beach land to build on.
Tulum falling flat – or – airlines rushing in with way too much capacity to a brand new destination?
Likely the latter rather than the former. We see this happen over and over again in the industry.
Remember… “fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”
Tulum is a seasonal destination most popular in the winter. That Canadian graph shows precisely the high season.
During that time of year the town with 3 traffic lights has actual traffic.
Seems like you have no clue the subject matter you’re writing about.
I was just in Akumal for 2 weeks earlier in November and went down to Tulum for a quick stop at a favorite store. There was horrible traffic, even in “low” season. That has been my experience over the past 15+ years — 6 of which I lived in Akumal. TQO was appealing in the beginning when it seemed like a less expensive option, but it’s in the middle of nowhere and is charging transport services astronomical fees to get in; which of course get passed on to the passengers and effectively erase any money saved on a cheaper flight. I flew into Tulum once and won’t do it again. It is not equipped to handle the influx. The area in general is busy all year, not just during “high” season. So maybe they actually do have a clue about the subject matter.
Not to mention the new train. Fly into cancun and take the train anywhere. We sold our house in tulum and do not regret it. Too big too fast. No infrastructure and it takes an hour to get to the beach, 30 minutes if you take kulkucan. It used to be 3 minutes
It’s hard to imagine less-than-daily flights selling well if there is a relatively convenient alternative airport with daily flights.
I might be willing to plan the dates of my vacation around flight availability if that’s the only option, but generally I want to go when it works for me, not when it works for the airline.
This is why I’m skeptical of 1x weekly service and always have been. This level of service presumes travelers all want to leave on Saturday and stay for exactly 1 week. Or, you’re giving return traffic to your competitors who serve the destination more frequently. Less sophisticated travelers might not know an airline only flies 1x/week and when they search for the day they want to travel and don’t see a flight, they just book alternate flights rather than clicking through the calendar to find the 1 nonstop flight.
Every cab is 30.00. 2 miles to beach, 30.00, 2 miles back 30.00.
Forget Tulum, never again.
I belive this had a much larger impact than it is given credit for. We looked at a trip but high taxi prices and weak/slow internet rumors had us looking elsewhere.
Sounds like Tenerife. Taxi 75 Euro for 10 mile, 14 minute ride TFS to Iberostar resort.
We have never paid more than 35 Euros to get to downtown Los Christians from TFS. 5 years in a row. 22 to 35.
It’s what keeps Tulum, Tulum though.
If it was $5 cab rides (or pick your ideal price), then it would be Cancún. That type of commercialized, overrun tourist saturated destination already exists up the road.
I’ve heard from people that have been there and they all complain about the taxi drivers money hungry, like to scam the turists, who wants to go to a place where they are after your hard work money. Not me.
The Mexican Riviera is a questionable destination during the summer months, as the sargassum seaweed situation basically destroys any enjoyment one can get from the beaches and water. Word is out about this, and it’s somewhat of an unfixable environmental disaster.
The seaweed is a legitimately huge problem. The public beaches used to be amazing, but now they are essentially unusable year-round because of the huge accumulation of seaweed, which smells awful and hosts swarms of sand flies. If you want to go to a beach today, you essentially have to go to a resort that is paying workers to cart off hundreds of wheelbarrows full of seaweed each week.
I used to stay in-town in Tulum, and drive to different beaches to swim and snorkel. At this point, I wouldn’t recommend this – you need to stay somewhere that has its own well-maintained beach.
If the local police would stop trying to extort everyone it would be a pretty cool place
We just went to cancun for fall break. I chose to fly into Yumim.bevause it saved us $600 over flying into cancun.
I loved the airport and how easy it was to get through it. The major downside was the cost to transport to cancun, which wasn $450. I was too afraid to rent a car and drive to cancun.
In general, Mexico is becoming less of a desirable destination due to all of the scamming that happens there. If we decide to go again, I have no issue with flying into Tulum.
Did you just say you paid $450USD to go to Cancun? Man you got scammed hard don’t forget to negotiate
Unfortunately, yes. It was for my family of three roundtrip. How do you negotiate online for a prepaid transportation service?
An add the new taxes for Q Roo! Never mind the outrageous fares from the airport to anywhere at Tulum.
“Hindsight is always 20/20” – Howard Cosell (he was the first person I ever heard use the term “20/20 hindsight”).
Nah, that saying was around for decades before he said it. If you search, you’ll find (I think) that no source can be definitely identified. It may have been a humorist for a Van Nuys newspaper in 1949.
Taxi and rental car scams have ruined Tulum. The taxi union, Sharks of the Caribbean, are ruthless. Why bother? It just isn’t fun there anymore.
The problem was transportation FROM Tulum. We have made relationships with taxi drivers since traveling there monthly for the past year, but our taxis couldn’t pick us up there. We had to rely on the one taxi service that is allowed to pick up fares at the airport, became victims of their price gouging and limited availability of vehicles. We had to wait 3 hours for a taxi to take us to our Airbnb. It sucks.
This! Our transportation (family of 3) to Cancun, using the official service for the airport, was $450 usd. You think that would be black car service with drinks and flowers. Nope. It was basically a low quality Uber.
We flew through Tulum in October. On the plus side… Nice, modern, new airport with very little traffic (unsustainably so) through immigration and baggage claim.
On the downside: it’s just as far from the Riviera Maya resorts as CUN (it’s far the other side of Tulum), the customs agents are bored and aggressive, and security upon departure is poorly trained and every bit as aggressive as customs (made me discard medication syringes because they’re “weapons”). Oh, and transfers are 2x as expensive.
Net-net: I wouldn’t bother again unless it was MUCH cheaper than CUN.
The airport charges are high tax for transportation its cheaper for people to fly into Cancun and get transportation from there. That’s why they are losing. I would never send someone through Tulum again. What cost $150 in Cancun cost $750 in Tulum. Ridiculous.
Between the taxi con artists, police random searches, shoppe scammers, greedy waiters, soso food, dusty pot hole roads and sargasm…. I’ll consider spending my money elsewhere and I’m sure others will too if they don’t start appreciating their tourists!
Tulum is awful. Shoulder-to-shoulder tourists. Even the judgy hippies have moved on. The airport’s appeal is saving 2 hours on the drive south, but South of Tulum is a one-and-done area that most don’t return to. This whole area is a great example of destroying a good tourism model. Now nobody wants to go there because it’s too popular! ?
I have been there in December during the perfect weather season. I was told it can be somewhat hot in July so better October through April. The beach hotel and staff were amazing. The hotel and area restaurants were fabulous. The beach was immaculate and not crowded. This was three years ago when the only Airport was Cancun so yes back then a two hour drive to Tulum. The new airport is so much more convenient.
Let’s not forget the price gauging in Tulum has turned visitors away. Cocktails $15.00 usd, taxi rides $45-50.00 each way to the beach from centro tulum. Just three years ago that same ride was $20.00 usd. Tulum/Mexico was a popular during Covid because that was the only place open. Now since the world is back open there are better and other options.
Just flew in and out of Tulum airport. Wow… what a great experience. In and out was super easy and the airport is laid out very conveniently. If the airport can keep itself from changing a good thing it will eventually be found and highly utilized.
Found AMLO’s burner account.
I happened to be in Mexico in March (flew into Cancún) when someone told us about the new airport. We were so excited that there was a direct flight from Charlotte to Tulum and now American is shutting it down. My point is, where were the airlines trying to promote those new (now to be canceled) routes? It was pure chance that we heard about it. Of course nobody is flying those routes if few know about them!
Very true!
I have heard part of the problem is that the taxi/uber prices are more expensive to get from the airport to the resorts than it is to catch a ride from Cancun to Tulum.