Quintana Roo Scraps In-Person Visitax Collection at Cancún Airport

Cancún, Quintana Roo — Quintana Roo Governor Mara Lezama Espinosa announced that the Visitax tourist fee will no longer be collected in person at Cancún International Airport, following a wave of complaints from travelers and business groups over alleged abusive practices by the company handling the charge.

“Anything that creates a bad experience has to go. We are talking about the Visitax charge at the airport; it has to go, it should be digital,” the governor said.

The fee — formally the charge for the use, enjoyment and exploitation of public-domain property — will now be handled exclusively through digital channels, removing the in-person collection points that have drawn scrutiny inside the terminal.

Contract Awarded to Firm With No Collection Experience

The collection is concessioned to Urquitem SA de CV, a company with a background in digital security rather than tax collection, which received the contract from the state government through a restricted-invitation tender. Urquitem operates the charge using technology from the Canadian firm Travelkore.

The most vocal complaints have centered on practices at Cancún International Airport, where staff for the company have pressed tourists for payment of an amount on top of the 293-peso Visitax, citing alleged operating costs.

David Ortiz Mena, president of the Mexican Caribbean Hotel Council, said his organization has reports of surcharges exceeding 80% on the payment demands Urquitem makes of tourists at the Cancún airport.

Tourism Sector Pushes for Full Repeal

Sergio González Rubiera, president of the Association of Inbound Tourism Agencies (Amatur), said the industry is demanding that the charge be repealed outright and that tourists stop being billed for it at all.

The sector plans to press that position at its next meeting with the governor, scheduled in 10 days to address airport-related issues.

Ortiz Mena agreed, warning that every traveler who leaves angry over a charge they do not understand, did not expect and view as an abuse is a visitor who will not return — and who will share the bad experience back home. For the Mexican Caribbean, he argued, that reputational cost already far exceeds what the Visitax brings in.

In the industry’s view, the fee has stopped being a tax and become a competitiveness problem, and business leaders say they will keep insisting that it be eliminated entirely.