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.
