Tulum Posts Quintana Roo’s Steepest Hotel Occupancy Drop, Down 9.1 Points in 2026

Tulum, Quintana Roo — Hotel occupancy in Tulum fell 9.10 percentage points between January and August 2026 compared with the same period a year earlier, the steepest decline of any destination in Quintana Roo tracked by official statistics, in a year marked by a heavy sargassum season and cutbacks in air service.

Figures from the Quintana Roo Tourism Information System (SITUR) show the destination averaged 61.81% occupancy in the first eight months of 2026, down from 70.91% over the same stretch of 2025.

The gap amounts to a 9.10-point drop. It does not mean the number of tourists fell by the same proportion, since occupancy measures the share of available rooms that were booked, not visitor counts.

Eight Months of Decline

The official comparison places Tulum at the bottom of Quintana Roo’s destinations for the period analyzed. The decline is notable because it spans eight months rather than a single low-season week, although the cumulative indicator does not show whether every month fell by the same margin.

The result also tracks earlier warnings from hoteliers about weaker tourism activity. In September, David Ortiz Mena, president of the Tulum Hotel Association, said occupancy levels were running up to 10 percentage points below those recorded a year earlier.

Sargassum Adds Pressure

A second challenge for Tulum in 2026 was the mass arrival of sargassum on its beaches. Figures released in September by the Quintana Roo Environment and Ecology Department showed the municipality had collected 17,990.27 tonnes of the seaweed, part of a season in which the state again broke its collection record.

The influx complicated efforts to clean and preserve the beaches, one of the area’s main tourist attractions. Available records do not allow officials to calculate what share of the occupancy decline can be attributed directly to the environmental problem.

Airlines Scale Back Flights to Tulum

Air connectivity is also undergoing significant changes.

• JetBlue ended its Tulum route in March 2026.
• Aeroméxico temporarily suspended its flights on Sept. 30, 2026.
• Volaris announced it will stop operating from Jan. 7, 2027, citing market conditions and higher costs for the industry.
• United Airlines confirmed it will withdraw its daily services from Newark and Houston, with final flights scheduled for Jan. 2 and Jan. 4, 2027, respectively.
• Delta Air Lines said it will suspend its Atlanta route starting in May 2027, with the possibility of resuming it during the following winter season.

Several of those announcements came after August and therefore do not directly explain the decline recorded in the first eight months of 2026. Airport management has also noted that other carriers continue to operate at the terminal and that seasonal service from Canada remains available.

A Test for the Winter Season

The 9.10-point drop reflects the difficulty Tulum’s hotel sector has had in holding occupancy at year-earlier levels. The heavy sargassum season and the airline changes form part of the tourism picture, though additional data would be needed to establish a causal link to the decline in occupied rooms.

The next key indicator will be occupancy during the final four months of 2026, particularly with the arrival of the winter holiday season.