Vacation Rental Host Confronts Visitax Charge at Cancún Airport

Cancún, Quintana Roo — A woman who introduces herself as a vacation rental operator questioned the Visitax tourist fee at Cancún International Airport and asked staff to explain what the charge covers, in an exchange she recorded to share with her guests.

“I have to pass that on to my tourists — I rent vacation properties,” she says in the video, asking staff to repeat the name of the payment. “I have every right to record this so I can share it.”

She then asks whether the charge is a tax applied to people visiting Quintana Roo, and warns about the effect on the destination: “So people can see how tourists are going to stop coming, because they keep charging tourists here.”

The recording does not show how much she was asked to pay. The complaint centers on how the charge is explained and collected at the terminal.

State fee, separate from federal charge

Visitax is a state contribution administered by the Quintana Roo tax administration service (SATQ) and has been in force since 2021. It applies to foreign visitors; Mexican citizens and local residents are exempt. The state government says the money goes to beaches, sargassum cleanup, infrastructure and tourism promotion.

The 224 pesos cited in older information was the rate at launch. In a December 2025 statement, the state government put the fee at 285 pesos and said it would not rise during 2026.

Visitax is separate from the federal Non-Resident Fee (DNR), which is tied to the immigration status of visitors who do not have permission to carry out paid work, and from the lodging tax and municipal environmental sanitation fees, which have their own bases and collection mechanisms.

The DNR is under discussion for an increase from 983 pesos to 1,158 pesos in 2027 — a rise of 175 pesos, or 17.8%, after an original proposed increase of 35.8% was scaled back. The reform has cleared Senate committees but still needs approval from the full chamber.

A foreign visitor subject to both the DNR and Visitax would pay 1,268 pesos per person for those two charges alone, before lodging and sanitation fees, which vary by property and municipality. If the 1,158-peso DNR is approved and Visitax stays at 285 pesos, that subtotal would reach 1,443 pesos per person.

Earlier complaints from the industry

Doubts about Visitax predate the video. In September 2025, hotel industry leader Toni Chaves flagged counterfeit websites that were charging visitors without clarity on where the money went, and said the sector was in talks with the state government about reviewing the collection system.

In December 2025, Miguel Ángel Lemus Mateos, president of the Quintana Roo Real Estate Developers Association, urged the state to improve collection and use of existing contributions before creating new charges to fund maintenance of the Hotel Zone.

The state government has acknowledged that Visitax lacked a clearly defined collection scheme from its creation, while defending the need to improve collection.

Passenger traffic falling

The complaint comes as Cancún’s airport loses traffic. According to ASUR, the airport operator, passenger movements fell to 20,882,658 between January and September 2026 from 22,196,857 in the same period of 2025 — a drop of 1,314,199 passengers, or 5.9%.

The figure does not establish that Visitax caused the decline.