Get all the data you need about the real estate market in Tulum
SUMMARY
Yes, Airbnb is still profitable in Tulum, but the investment only looks attractive today when the property is bought cheaply enough, has manageable costs and can outperform the large pool of generic condos.
The headline Airbnb numbers look much stronger than the underlying market. Average annual revenue per active listing is up 62.2%, but the number of active rentals measured by AirDNA has fallen 69.4%, which means much of the apparent improvement comes from weaker listings disappearing from the average.
Properties that stayed active have not enjoyed the same recovery. Tulum RevPAR is still down 9.7% year over year, while average nightly rates are down 23%, even though occupancy has improved to 46%.
Tourism is also softer than a year ago. Tulum hotel occupancy fell by more than eight percentage points in the first half of 2026, while airport passengers declined about 33% and international passengers roughly 41%.
The new Tulum airport therefore improved accessibility without delivering the automatic tourism boom many real-estate projections assumed. Passenger growth stalled after its launch and then reversed sharply in 2026.
Airbnb supply is shrinking much faster than tourism demand. That is helping surviving operators fill more nights, but it also means better occupancy should not automatically be interpreted as evidence of a stronger destination-wide market.
The average active Tulum short-term rental now generates about $17,700 a year in gross revenue. Once management, Airbnb fees, HOA charges, utilities, maintenance, insurance and replacements are included, an absentee owner can lose a surprisingly large share of that figure.
Long-term renting has become a much more credible alternative. With median monthly rents around $1,060, a normal long-term tenancy can come surprisingly close to the net result of an average professionally managed Airbnb without the same turnover and operating burden.
Falling condo prices are what make the Airbnb case interesting again. The same $17,700 of annual revenue can look attractive on a $120,000 resale and mediocre on a $250,000 to $300,000 condo, so acquisition price now matters more than optimistic occupancy projections.
The strongest setup today is a discounted completed resale with proven booking history, reasonable HOA costs, a feature guests actually value and a viable long-term-rental fallback. Generic presale condos requiring 70% occupancy and premium nightly rates remain much harder to justify.
Tulum has moved from a market where simply owning a vacation rental could work to one where the economics depend heavily on property selection. The opportunity is still there, but most of the return now has to be created when buying the property rather than assumed from future tourism growth.
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Is Airbnb still profitable in Tulum?
Are Tulum Airbnb numbers actually improving right now?
Tulum Airbnb performance looks better on the surface today, but the underlying market is still weaker than the headline revenue growth suggests.
AirDNA's latest completed market data puts Tulum at roughly 4,130 active short-term rentals, 46% occupancy, a $125 average nightly rate and $17,700 in annual revenue per active listing. Average revenue is up 62.2% from a year earlier.
That sounds like a dramatic recovery until we look at what happened to the pool of listings being averaged.
Active short-term rentals fell 69.4% over the same period. AirDNA's figures imply that the measured market went from roughly 13,500 active listings to just over 4,100. Thousands of weaker, inactive or abandoned listings have therefore stopped weighing on the average.
AirDNA gives us a cleaner way to check whether properties that stayed in the market actually improved. Its revenue-growth methodology compares properties operating in both periods. On that basis, Tulum's RevPAR fell 9.7%.
So we are looking at a market with fewer survivors, better occupancy among those survivors, much higher average revenue per remaining listing and weaker comparable revenue per available night.
That mix is more useful than the 62% revenue-growth headline on its own.
| Tulum short-term rental metric | Current level | Change from a year earlier | What we learn |
|---|---|---|---|
| Active listings | 4,130 | -69.4% | The measured rental pool has collapsed |
| Average annual revenue | $17,700 | +62.2% | Remaining listings look much stronger |
| Occupancy | 46% | +17.4% | Surviving rentals are filling more nights |
| Average nightly rate | $125 | -23.0% | Pricing power remains weak |
| RevPAR | $57 | -9.7% | Comparable rental performance is still down |
Is Tulum tourism weaker than it was a year ago?
Yes. Tulum tourism is clearly softer today, and the slowdown is large enough to affect Airbnb assumptions.
Quintana Roo's official tourism-monitoring system puts Tulum hotel occupancy at 66.18% for the first half of 2026, compared with 74.32% over the same part of 2025. The gap is more than eight percentage points.
Tulum also underperformed the broader Riviera Maya. Riviera Maya hotel occupancy fell from 76.63% to 72.77% over the same periods, a decline of 3.87 points. Tulum's drop was more than twice as large.
The weakness also follows an already softer 2025. Full-year Tulum hotel occupancy had declined from 73.8% in 2024 to 69.1% in 2025.
Airport traffic tells the same story from another angle. Federal aviation data shows Tulum airport handling roughly 471,500 passengers during the first half of 2026, versus 705,400 a year earlier.
International traffic was hit particularly hard.
Hotels and airport traffic are both deteriorating. Tourism has certainly not disappeared from Tulum, but current demand is weaker than the demand many Airbnb investments were originally priced around.
| Tulum tourism indicator | Previous period | Latest comparable period | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| H1 hotel occupancy | 74.32% | 66.18% | -8.13 pts |
| Full-year hotel occupancy | 73.8% in 2024 | 69.1% in 2025 | -4.7 pts |
| H1 airport passengers | 705,400 | 471,500 | -33.2% |
| H1 international passengers | 417,600 | 247,100 | -40.8% |
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Did Tulum Airport actually create the Airbnb boom investors expected?
No. Tulum Airport made the destination easier to reach, but it has not produced the steady demand growth that many real-estate projections assumed.
The airport had an impressive launch. It handled around 1.23 million passengers in 2024, its first full year of operation, and roughly the same number in 2025.
Growth then reversed sharply.
According to federal aviation statistics reported by El Economista, first-half passenger traffic fell 33.2% in 2026. International passengers dropped 40.8%.
The deterioration became even steeper in June, when total airport traffic fell 44.8% from a year earlier.
The airport still improves Tulum's long-term accessibility, and that has real value. But the simple thesis that a new airport automatically means more guests, higher occupancy and steadily rising Airbnb income has already failed the first serious test.
Investors who bought on that assumption were too optimistic.
Is Tulum still flooded with too many Airbnbs?
Tulum still has a lot of vacation-rental inventory, but the more interesting development now is how aggressively that inventory is shrinking.
The oversupply built over several years. Airbtics estimated that Tulum added roughly 1,379 Airbnb listings during 2025 alone, while market datasets around that period regularly showed a vacation-rental universe above 13,000 properties.
AirDNA's latest count is dramatically lower.
Its 4,130 active rentals and 69.4% year-over-year decline imply a previous measured pool of around 13,500 listings. Different providers use different definitions of an active rental, so we should avoid pretending that every disappeared unit has literally been removed from Airbnb.
Still, the direction is unmistakable. A huge share of Tulum's marginal rental supply is no longer being counted as active.
For owners who remain, that is helpful. Fewer competing calendars make it easier to capture bookings.
The reason matters, though. Current tourism indicators are weakening at the same time. Tulum is getting relief because supply is leaving faster than demand is falling.
That can stabilize the better properties without restoring the economics of every condo built during the boom.
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Is Tulum Airbnb occupancy good enough today?
Tulum Airbnb occupancy is improving, but 46% occupancy still leaves a lot of empty nights.
At 46%, a property available throughout the year would fill roughly 168 nights and sit empty for around 197.
That does not automatically make the property unprofitable. A villa charging $500 a night can make excellent money with moderate occupancy. A small condo charging $100 to $130 has much less room.
The useful part of the latest AirDNA data is the combination of occupancy and nightly rate.
Occupancy rose 17.4%, while the average nightly rate fell 23%.
Owners are filling more of their calendars partly by accepting lower prices.
This is why a property manager can show an owner rising bookings while the economics still feel disappointing. More reservations do not guarantee more money per available night.
For an average Tulum condo, 46% occupancy should now be treated as a realistic market reference rather than building an investment model around 70% or 80%.
Are Tulum Airbnb owners having to cut prices?
Yes. Tulum Airbnb owners are currently giving up a lot of nightly-rate pricing power.
AirDNA's latest average daily rate is $125, down 23% from a year earlier.
A 23% decline is too large to dismiss as normal monthly noise. The market is using price to keep occupancy moving.
The pressure becomes clearer when we look at RevPAR, which combines occupancy and nightly rates. Tulum RevPAR is about $57 and is down 9.7% year over year even though occupancy increased.
So the average active rental is selling more nights while earning less for each available night.
That is a difficult setup for owners with high fixed costs because HOA fees, insurance and much of the property's maintenance do not fall when the nightly rate falls.
Luxury or genuinely unusual properties can escape part of that pressure. A standard one-bedroom apartment with dozens of close substitutes has a much harder time.
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How much money does the average Tulum Airbnb make now?
The average active Tulum short-term rental currently generates about $17,700 a year before owner expenses.
That works out to around $1,475 in gross monthly revenue.
The number is useful because it puts many property sales pitches into perspective. A projected $35,000 or $40,000 annual rental plan requires the unit to perform at roughly twice today's citywide average.
Some properties absolutely can do that. A strong historical booking record can prove it.
Without that record, however, we should treat such projections as sales assumptions rather than market expectations.
The other mistake is calling $17,700 "income" without discussing expenses. Gross bookings still have to pay for Airbnb fees, management, HOA charges, electricity, internet, maintenance, insurance, furniture replacement, accounting and taxes.
For an absentee owner, those deductions can be brutal.
How much Airbnb revenue does a Tulum condo owner actually keep?
A professionally managed Tulum condo can easily lose 30% to 45% of gross rental revenue before income tax and financing enter the calculation.
Local management companies commonly advertise commissions around 15% to 25%. Ambar Villas, for example, publishes a 20% management fee and explains separately that utilities, insurance, major replacements, accounting and platform charges remain owner expenses.
Airbnb then takes its own fee. Mexican hosts on the split-fee model currently pay 4%. Hosts using the single-fee model, including some professionally managed properties using property-management software, can face a 16% host charge.
HOA costs vary widely. Current Tulum listings show everything from relatively modest monthly maintenance to several hundred dollars for developments with pools, gyms, elevators, security and large common areas.
Using the current $17,700 market-wide gross revenue gives us a much more useful picture than a gross-yield calculation.
And these examples still exclude electricity, internet, repairs, insurance, furnishings, accounting, income tax and mortgage costs.
| Example operating setup | Gross revenue | Management | Airbnb fee | Annual HOA | Left before other expenses |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Self-managed, 4% Airbnb fee, $150 HOA | $17,700 | $0 | $708 | $1,800 | $15,192 |
| 20% manager, 4% Airbnb fee, $150 HOA | $17,700 | $3,540 | $708 | $1,800 | $11,652 |
| 20% manager, 4% Airbnb fee, $250 HOA | $17,700 | $3,540 | $708 | $3,000 | $10,452 |
| 25% manager, 4% Airbnb fee, $250 HOA | $17,700 | $4,425 | $708 | $3,000 | $9,567 |
| 25% manager, 16% Airbnb fee, $250 HOA | $17,700 | $4,425 | $2,832 | $3,000 | $7,443 |
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Can long-term rent now beat Airbnb in Tulum?
For an average condo, long-term renting can now come surprisingly close to Airbnb once we compare what the owner actually keeps.
TuLugar currently tracks more than 500 Tulum housing listings and puts the median monthly rent around $1,060. Annualized, that is roughly $12,700.
As seen above, the average active short-term rental generates around $17,700 gross.
So Airbnb's gross advantage is only about $5,000 a year before taking on the extra cost and work that short-term guests create.
A 20% Airbnb manager alone would consume $3,540 of that difference. Add platform fees, heavier electricity use, guest turnover, linen replacement and extra maintenance, and the Airbnb premium can become very small.
The comparison will vary property by property. Some condos have weak long-term demand but strong tourist appeal. Others are far easier to rent to a resident than to tourists.
Still, this is a useful reality check today: an owner should no longer assume that Airbnb automatically produces the better net return just because the gross booking total is higher.
Have falling condo prices made Tulum Airbnb attractive again?
Cheaper Tulum condos have improved Airbnb yields enormously, but the deal only starts to look compelling when the purchase price falls far enough.
The price correction has already been severe. Mario San Miguel, president of AMPI Tulum, told El Economista that condominium prices in the region fell 47.6% between 2023 and 2025.
Fresh inventory data still shows a market full of choice.
TuLugar currently monitors 504 Tulum properties and puts the median apartment asking price around $206,000. Its one-bedroom median is approximately $171,000, while two-bedroom apartments are close to $283,000.
Inmuebles24 also shows hundreds of units for sale in Aldea Zama alone. One current 70-square-meter, one-bedroom furnished resale there is advertised at MXN 2.2 million, well below the broader one-bedroom median.
The entry price therefore varies enormously, and that changes the Airbnb result more than almost anything else.
If a $120,000 property earns average Tulum revenue, gross yield approaches 15%. At $205,000, the same revenue gives less than 9%. At $283,000, it falls close to 6%.
A good negotiator can create more return at the purchase stage today than an owner can realistically hope to manufacture later through minor Airbnb optimization.
| Purchase price | Gross yield at $17,700 revenue | After 20% management + 4% Airbnb fee | Before HOA and other costs |
|---|---|---|---|
| $120,000 | 14.8% | 11.2% | Strong starting point |
| $150,000 | 11.8% | 9.0% | Can work well |
| $171,000 | 10.4% | 7.9% | Costs start to matter a lot |
| $205,000 | 8.6% | 6.6% | Harder to justify passively |
| $250,000 | 7.1% | 5.4% | Needs above-average performance |
| $283,000 | 6.3% | 4.8% | Weak at average rental revenue |
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Are Tulum condo sellers still under pressure?
Yes. Tulum property sellers still face enough excess inventory that buyers have room to negotiate.
A recent market analysis reported by El Economista puts Tulum-region housing inventory at 6,340 units in 2023, almost double the 3,243 units recorded in 2019.
Sales then weakened sharply.
Annual sales dropped from 3,487 homes in 2023 to roughly 1,711 in 2025, a decline of about 51%. Average monthly absorption per development also fell from 1.4 units in 2022 to 0.9 in 2025.
This helps explain why large discounts are appearing in current resale listings even after AMPI's reported price correction.
The market still has many owners and developers trying to sell into much weaker transaction volumes.
For an Airbnb buyer, that changes the strategy completely. There is very little reason to pay a developer's optimistic asking price simply because the brochure promises a high rental yield.
These days, the better opportunity is often to let an existing owner absorb the correction first.
Does the exact Tulum condo matter more than the neighborhood now?
Yes. The exact property matters much more now because generic Tulum condos are competing on price while differentiated rentals can still charge a premium.
A guest searching Airbnb does not really buy "Tulum real estate." The guest chooses between specific stays.
A private pool, unusually good design, strong reviews, walkability, quiet surroundings, genuine beach access, a large group layout or a well-run lock-off can change what the guest is willing to pay.
A generic one-bedroom apartment with a rooftop pool has far less protection because Tulum produced huge numbers of similar units during the boom.
The latest market data reinforces this. Average nightly rates have fallen heavily even as weaker listings disappear.
Surviving in the market is no longer enough. The property needs a reason to win bookings without constantly undercutting comparable condos.
This is also why citywide revenue averages should only be the first screen. Before buying, we would want revenue history from genuinely comparable properties with the same bedroom count, location, amenities, quality and guest profile.
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Can a good Airbnb manager rescue a mediocre Tulum condo?
A good Tulum Airbnb manager can improve revenue, but the manager cannot fix a purchase price that was too high.
Professional management has obvious advantages today. Good operators adjust rates frequently, respond quickly to guests, manage reviews, coordinate cleaners and maintenance, and distribute inventory beyond one booking platform.
Those skills can produce a meaningful lift over an absentee owner who rarely changes prices.
The problem is cost.
At a 20% management commission, every additional $5,000 of gross rental revenue costs the owner another $1,000 in management fees before Airbnb charges and other expenses.
The manager therefore needs to produce a sizeable improvement merely to justify the commission.
The best test is simple: ask for actual net owner statements from comparable properties after management, platform fees and operating costs.
A glossy occupancy projection tells us almost nothing about owner profit.
Is Tulum Airbnb regulation getting harder?
Yes. Running an Airbnb in Tulum is becoming more formal, and casual owners have more compliance to deal with than they did during the boom.
Quintana Roo's tourism authority continues to require tourism service providers to register or renew through RETUR-Q. The state has published a dedicated 2026 registration and renewal process.
The regulatory framework also ties tourism accommodation to safety and operating requirements, including civil-protection obligations.
For serious operators, none of this makes short-term rentals impossible.
It does make the old "buy a condo, upload five photos and collect passive dollars" version of Tulum investing increasingly unrealistic.
There is another possible upside. Stronger registration requirements can remove some poorly run or non-compliant supply from the market.
Established operators may eventually benefit from that cleanup, although regulation will not compensate for weak tourism demand or a bad purchase price.
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Should investors buy a Tulum presale for Airbnb now?
A Tulum presale is a much harder Airbnb bet today than a completed resale with real operating history.
AMPI says more than 80% of the condos commercialized during the post-pandemic expansion were sold in presale.
That model worked beautifully while buyers assumed prices, tourism and vacation-rental income would keep rising together.
The correction exposed the problem. With a presale, the buyer often has no verified rental history, no mature HOA budget, no real guest reviews and no way to see how the finished building will compete against nearby properties.
A completed resale gives us far more information. We can inspect the building, check maintenance costs, see actual noise and access conditions, examine previous bookings and compare the asking price with distressed listings nearby.
There may still be excellent new developments in Tulum. But today, a presale needs to earn its premium with unusually convincing numbers.
The burden of proof has flipped.
What kind of Tulum Airbnb can still make good money?
A Tulum Airbnb can still make very good money when the owner buys cheaply enough and the property earns clearly above-average revenue.
The strongest opportunities usually combine several advantages at once.
The purchase price is already well below boom-era levels. The HOA is manageable. The property has a feature guests actually care about. Management costs stay under control. Comparable rentals show real historical revenue rather than developer projections. Long-term rental remains a viable fallback.
Those conditions give the investor room to survive an ordinary year.
The most fragile investment looks very different: an expensive new condo, high maintenance fees, outsourced management, little differentiation and a financial model that needs 70% occupancy at a premium nightly rate.
Current Tulum data gives us no reason to underwrite that aggressively.
The market still rewards excellent properties. It has become much less forgiving of average ones.
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So, is Airbnb still profitable in Tulum?
Yes, Airbnb is still profitable in Tulum today, but only a much narrower group of properties looks genuinely attractive as an investment.
The current market has improved in one important way: weak short-term-rental supply is being flushed out. Owners who remain active are booking a larger share of their calendars, and falling property prices have created entry points that barely existed during the boom.
The tougher side of the story is equally clear. Tulum tourism has weakened, nightly rates are under pressure, operating costs eat a large part of gross bookings, and buyers still face a lot of condo inventory.
As pointed out above, AirDNA's $17,700 average annual revenue is perfectly capable of producing positive cash flow on a cheap property. Put the same revenue against a $200,000 to $300,000 purchase with professional management and high HOA charges, and the return quickly becomes mediocre.
That gives us a fairly sharp line.
A discounted resale around $100,000 to $150,000 with manageable fees, good differentiation and proven rental history can still make sense.
A generic condo bought above $200,000 needs to outperform today's Tulum averages by a meaningful margin before we would call it a strong Airbnb investment.
Airbnb in Tulum still works, but the easy-money phase is over. Profitability now comes from buying the right property at the right price rather than simply owning something in Tulum.
OUR METHODOLOGY
We approached this as an investment question rather than a sentiment question. Tulum produces enough conflicting data that a single metric can give the wrong impression, so we assessed short-term-rental performance, tourism demand, competitive supply, operating costs, long-term-rental alternatives, property pricing, market liquidity and regulation separately before combining them.
For current short-term-rental performance, we used AirDNA's Tulum market data for active listings, occupancy, average nightly rate, annual revenue and RevPAR. We also checked AirDNA's own methodology for active listings, occupancy, revenue and RevPAR because the unusually large reduction in measured rental supply materially affects how the year-over-year averages should be interpreted.
We did not treat the 62.2% increase in average annual revenue per active listing as a standalone recovery measure. AirDNA's active-listing count fell 69.4% over the same period, so we read average revenue alongside the changing supply base and used comparable-property RevPAR as an additional check on properties that remained active.
Tourism demand was assessed separately from Airbnb performance. We used Quintana Roo's official SITURQ hotel-occupancy data to compare Tulum with its own prior-year performance and with the broader Riviera Maya, while federal AFAC aviation statistics and El Economista's reporting on those figures were used to track passenger traffic through Tulum Airport.
For operating economics, gross Airbnb revenue was treated as a starting point rather than owner income. Airbnb's current Mexican host-fee rules were combined with published management pricing from Ambar Villas and current HOA examples to illustrate how management, platform fees and building costs change the economics before utilities, repairs, insurance, furnishings, taxes or financing.
Long-term-rental and acquisition-price comparisons use current TuLugar market data for Tulum rents and apartment asking prices. Inmuebles24 was used as an additional check on live resale inventory and asking-price dispersion, particularly in Aldea Zama.
Property-market conditions were checked against El Economista's reporting on AMPI and Softec-related market data, including the reported condominium-price correction, presale exposure, housing inventory, annual sales and development-level absorption. Those figures help distinguish a profitable rental operation from a property that was simply bought too expensively.
The purchase-price ranges used in the conclusion are screening ranges, not universal thresholds. We applied the current $17,700 market-wide annual revenue baseline to different acquisition prices and then read the resulting yields against management costs, Airbnb fees, HOA expenses, tourism trends, resale conditions and the long-term-rental alternative.
Regulatory conditions were checked against Quintana Roo's official RETUR-Q information and 2026 registration and renewal process. Regulation is included as an operating consideration rather than treated as the main driver of the investment conclusion.
Key sources used for this analysis include AirDNA's current Tulum short-term-rental market data, AirDNA's data-sourcing methodology, AirDNA's active-listing methodology, Quintana Roo's official hotel-occupancy statistics, AFAC aviation statistics, El Economista on Tulum Airport's 2026 passenger decline, Airbtics' Mexico short-term-rental supply report, Airbnb's host service-fee rules, Ambar Villas' published property-management pricing, TuLugar's current Tulum rent and sale-price data, Inmuebles24's current Aldea Zama resale inventory, El Economista on Tulum's condominium-price correction and presale exposure, El Economista on housing inventory, sales and absorption, and Quintana Roo's RETUR-Q portal.
Buying real estate in Tulum can be risky
An increasing number of foreign investors are showing interest. However, 90% of them will make mistakes. Avoid the pitfalls with our comprehensive guide.
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