Tulum Occupancy Crisis: What "Working at 10%" Actually Means for Operators Still Selling the Region

Here's a number that doesn't add up on the surface: Tulum hotels hit 73% occupancy this past winter — a real recovery after dipping below 50% the year before. Meanwhile, in July 2026, a local tour operator told Riviera Maya News his business is running at just 10% capacity. Same destination, same season of the year-round calendar, wildly different reality.

Both numbers are true. They're just measuring two different Tulums — and if you're still selling this destination to clients, the gap between them is exactly what you need to understand before you build another itinerary around it.

THE TWO TULUMS: HOTELS RECOVERING, TOURS COLLAPSING

The timeline matters here. Tulum hotel occupancy fell from 66.7% in September 2024 to 49.2% by September 2025 — one of the worst stretches the destination has seen. Winter demand from the northern hemisphere, new free public beach access points, and tighter security coordination pulled that number back up to 73% by early 2026. On paper, that reads like a comeback story.

But the same winter that lifted hotels didn't lift the airport. Tulum International Airport's international passenger traffic fell 34% in Q1 2026 versus the same period in 2025, with international departures dropping from 10 flights a day to just 3. Four carriers — Avianca, Copa, JetBlue, and Volaris Costa Rica — suspended service entirely, cutting the airport from 12 international destinations down to 4, all U.S. routes. Airlines and travelers are voting with their feet, routing through Cancún instead, even though the transfer to Tulum from there is longer and pricier.

Then came summer. By July 2026, tour operators — not hotels — were reporting the real damage: capacity utilization as low as 10%. That's a different metric measuring a different business, and it's the one that should worry anyone selling experiences, not just beds.

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WHY TULUM TOUR OPERATORS ARE HURTING MORE THAN HOTELS

A hotel just needs a guest to show up and stay. A tour operator needs that same guest to say yes to an activity, on top of everything else they've already paid for — and in Tulum right now, that's a harder yes to get.

Toledo Martínez, who runs Easy Tours in Tulum, put it plainly: "Many tourists want to book a tour, but they won't let us into the Jaguar Park." Since the creation of Jaguar Park consolidated and restricted beach and archaeological zone access, travelers who want to do a cenote tour, a Sian Ka'an excursion, or a beach day now have to clear a park entrance fee on top of transportation and taxis. Every additional line item is another chance for a guest to decide the whole thing isn't worth the hassle — and increasingly, they are deciding exactly that.

Layer recurring sargassum season and what operators describe as insufficient destination promotion on top of that friction, and you get a summer where hotel rooms might be booked but the experiences around them are going unsold.

WHY THIS KEEPS HAPPENING

None of this is really about Tulum losing its appeal.

It's structural:

The destination overbuilt hotel inventory during the post-pandemic boom, which means occupancy recoveries can look strong even while per-property and per-operator revenue stays weak — more rooms chasing the same demand. Airlines have simultaneously concluded that Cancún is the more reliable bet, shrinking Tulum's direct air access and pushing more travelers onto a longer, costlier ground transfer before they've spent a peso locally. And the newest access restrictions around Jaguar Park were introduced as conservation and organization measures, not tourism-growth measures — nobody designed them with operator cash flow in mind, but operators are the ones absorbing the cost.

Put together: guests who do arrive are more expensive to convert into paying tour clients than they were two years ago, at exactly the moment airlift is getting harder to rely on.

WHAT THIS MEANS IF YOU'RE STILL SELLING TULUM

Tulum isn't a destination to quietly drop from your Mexico product — the winter occupancy numbers show real demand still exists. But "selling Tulum" in 2026 means selling around the friction, not around the postcard image.

A few concrete adjustments:

Price the full stack up front. Bundle the Jaguar Park entrance fee, transport, and any secondary access costs into your published tour price instead of letting guests discover them mid-trip. Sticker shock at the gate is exactly what's killing operator conversion right now.

Secure access before you sell. Work with local partners who already hold confirmed Jaguar Park access arrangements, rather than building itineraries that assume walk-up entry will be available.

Route clients through Cancún, deliberately. With Tulum's own airport down to four international destinations, build the transfer into the guest experience narrative rather than treating it as a downside to minimize.

Diversify the Yucatán stops around Tulum. Bacalar, Valladolid, and Sian Ka'an access points outside the most congested zones give you comparable cultural and natural experiences with less of the access-fee friction currently dragging down Tulum-specific tours.

Weight your calendar toward winter. If hotel-side recovery is real anywhere, it's in the winter high season — that's where Tulum currently earns its keep. Treat summer Tulum bookings as higher-risk and build in more flexibility for clients.

The operators who keep this destination profitable through 2026 won't be the ones selling "Tulum" as a name. They'll be the ones who've already solved the access-and-cost-stacking problem before the client ever asks about it.