Is Tulum too crowded with Airbnbs?

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Why does Tulum feel so crowded with Airbnbs now?

Tulum feels crowded with Airbnbs today because vacation-rental supply kept expanding after tourism stopped growing fast enough to absorb it.

The timing explains most of the problem. Tulum went through an enormous condo-building cycle during the years when developers could sell small apartments around a simple investment pitch: tourism was booming, the destination was becoming more accessible, and short-term rentals could turn a condo into an income-producing asset.

The construction numbers show how far that went. An InfoHabitat analysis using Softec data found 1,466 housing units under construction in Tulum in 2017. By 2023, that figure had climbed to 13,266.

Tourism then moved in the opposite direction. Quintana Roo's tourism secretariat estimated 1.68 million tourists in Tulum in 2025, down 5.3% from 1.77 million the previous year.

At the same time, short-term-rental supply was still growing. Airbtics counted 6,635 active Airbnb listings around the beginning of 2026, 23.4% more than a year earlier.

Tulum still gets a huge number of visitors. The problem is that owners are now dividing those visitors across a much larger pool of places to stay.

How many Airbnbs does Tulum actually have?

Tulum currently has several thousand active short-term rentals, although there is no credible single number that captures the whole market perfectly.

AirROI's latest dataset counts 8,327 active Tulum listings. Airbtics counted 6,635 around the beginning of the year. AirDNA's latest Tulum, Quintana Roo dataset reports 4,130 active short-term rentals.

Airbnb's consumer website shows an even larger pool of vacation rentals available around Tulum.

The gap between these estimates is too large to ignore. The providers use different geographic boundaries, activity thresholds, booking channels and definitions of what qualifies as an active property. AirDNA, for example, combines Airbnb, Vrbo and Booking.com and removes duplicate homes across platforms. AirROI tracks a different listing universe. Airbtics focuses on Airbnb.

So we should avoid pretending Tulum has exactly 6,635, 8,327 or any other precise number of Airbnbs. The useful conclusion is the scale: even the conservative datasets put the active market in the thousands.

AirROI also ranks Tulum second in Mexico by active short-term-rental listings in its latest national dataset. Only Mexico City has more.

For a relatively small resort destination, that is a lot of competing supply.

Data provider	Latest Tulum count	Occupancy	What the figure tells us
AirROI	8,327	29.3%	Very broad active-listing universe
Airbtics	6,635	47%	Airbnb-focused market estimate
AirDNA, Tulum Quintana Roo	4,130	46%	Multi-platform active STR estimate
AirDNA, Greater Tulum	1,000	43%	Separate geographic market definition

Does Tulum have an unusually large Airbnb market for its size?

Yes, Tulum has an unusually large short-term-rental market compared with the size of its traditional hotel sector.

Quintana Roo's official tourism database currently lists 239 hotels and 11,993 hotel rooms in Tulum.

Now compare that with the short-term-rental estimates. AirROI finds more than 8,300 active listings. Airbtics finds more than 6,600. Even AirDNA's narrower Tulum figure is above 4,000.

These units are not directly equivalent to hotel rooms. A villa with four bedrooms counts as one rental listing, while a hotel with 100 rooms contributes 100 rooms. Even so, the comparison shows how much parallel accommodation Tulum has created outside the traditional hotel business.

Using AirROI's count, there are roughly seven active short-term rentals for every ten official hotel rooms. With Airbtics, the ratio is around one rental for every two hotel rooms.

That is a dense vacation-rental market. AirROI's national comparison makes the point even clearer: Tulum has more active short-term-rental listings in its dataset than Playa del Carmen and Puerto Vallarta, despite being a much smaller urban market.

Market	AirROI active listings	Average occupancy	Average monthly revenue
Mexico City	21,380	43.3%	$1,269
Tulum	8,327	29.3%	$1,118
Playa del Carmen	7,961	36.7%	$972
Puerto Vallarta	6,834	37.7%	$1,767

Did Airbnb supply grow faster than tourism in Tulum?

Yes, Tulum's Airbnb supply recently grew much faster than tourist demand, which is the clearest sign of oversupply in the market.

Airbtics measured active listings up 23.4% year over year around the beginning of 2026. Over three years, its active-listing count increased 126.8%.

Tourist arrivals were moving the other way. According to Quintana Roo's official tourism estimates, Tulum went from 1,773,767 visitors in 2024 to 1,679,190 in 2025.

So one recent period gave us roughly 23% growth in Airbnb supply against a 5.3% decline in tourists.

The comparison is not mathematically perfect because the reporting periods and methodologies are different. It is still a useful test of the underlying market: accommodation supply was expanding rapidly while the pool of tourists available to fill those properties was shrinking.

Hotel capacity was also creeping upward. Tulum had 11,882 hotel rooms in an official tourism report from 2025 and now has 11,993 in the government's live destination database.

Airbnb owners therefore had to absorb competition from both sides: more short-term rentals and more conventional lodging.

Tulum indicator	Earlier figure	Later figure	Change
Tourist arrivals	1.77M	1.68M	-5.3%
Airbtics active listings	~5,376	6,635	+23.4%
Airbtics listings over three years	~2,925	6,635	+126.8%
Official hotel rooms	11,882	11,993	+0.9%

Are Tulum Airbnbs actually struggling to fill nights?

Yes, occupancy is weak enough today to show that many Tulum Airbnbs are competing for too few booked nights.

AirROI's latest full-year dataset puts average Tulum occupancy at only 29.3%. That means the average available property in its sample is booked fewer than three nights out of ten.

Airbtics produces a higher figure of 47%, but its longer history is revealing. Occupancy is down 14.6% over three years while active listings more than doubled.

AirDNA's latest Tulum, Quintana Roo dataset looks better on the surface. Its current occupancy figure is 46%, up 17.4% from a year earlier.

That improvement is real enough to take seriously. At least part of the market appears to be correcting as listings disappear from AirDNA's active pool and the remaining homes capture more bookings.

But 46% occupancy still leaves more than half of available nights unbooked, and the improvement has come alongside a sharp drop in nightly pricing. Some booking density has returned. Strong pricing power has not.

The disagreement between providers changes the exact occupancy number. It does not change the broader picture: nobody is measuring Tulum as a consistently high-occupancy short-term-rental market right now.

Are Tulum Airbnb hosts cutting prices to get bookings?

Yes, Tulum hosts are increasingly using lower prices to defend occupancy.

AirDNA's latest Tulum, Quintana Roo numbers are especially useful here. Average occupancy has risen to 46%, yet the average daily rate has fallen 23% year over year to $125.

RevPAR, which combines price and occupancy into revenue earned per available night, is still down 9.7%.

So the extra bookings have not fully compensated for lower rates.

AirDNA's Greater Tulum market shows a milder version of the same pattern. Average daily rates are down 7.3%, while RevPAR is essentially flat, up just 0.9%.

AirROI finds a $192 average nightly rate but only 29.3% occupancy, leaving RevPAR at $59.

These datasets measure different slices of the market, so the dollar figures should not be blended together. The common pattern is more useful: Tulum properties are having a harder time turning advertised nightly rates into strong revenue across all available nights.

Guests have enough alternatives to become price-sensitive, while owners with HOA fees, maintenance bills and management costs have strong reasons to discount rather than leave the property empty.

Is Tulum Airbnb revenue really recovering now?

Tulum Airbnb revenue has improved for some active properties, but we would be very careful calling this a broad recovery.

AirDNA currently reports annual revenue of $17,700 for the average active listing in its Tulum, Quintana Roo market, up 62.2% year over year.

That sounds extraordinary until we look at the rest of the dataset. AirDNA's active-listing count dropped 69.4% over the same comparison period.

When a dataset loses a large number of weaker or intermittently active listings, the average revenue of the remaining properties can rise very quickly. The surviving pool becomes smaller and potentially much stronger.

Airbtics gives us a longer view. Its median Tulum Airbnb generated MXN237,000 over the 12 months ending around the beginning of 2026. That was up 2.5% year over year but still 17.3% below three years earlier.

AirROI's latest estimate is roughly $13,400 in annual revenue per listing.

Taken together, the numbers suggest a market where stronger operators can still make money and where some active properties are recovering. They do not show a return to easy, market-wide Airbnb growth.

Provider	Annual revenue	Recent revenue trend	Useful context
AirDNA Tulum	$17.7K	+62.2% YoY	Active listing count down sharply
AirDNA Greater Tulum	$27.7K	+68.0% YoY	RevPAR only +0.9%
AirROI	$13.4K	Current TTM estimate	Occupancy only 29.3%
Airbtics	MXN237K	+2.5% YoY	Still -17.3% over three years

Is weaker tourism making Tulum's Airbnb problem worse?

Yes, weaker tourism is making Tulum's Airbnb oversupply much harder to work through.

This pressure is visible well beyond Airbnb.

Official tourism data shows Tulum's hotel occupancy falling from 73.8% in 2024 to 69.1% in 2025. The decline became much steeper in the first half of 2026: occupancy averaged 66.18%, down from 74.32% during the same period a year earlier.

That 8.1-point drop was much worse than the 3-point decline recorded across Quintana Roo as a whole. Playa del Carmen fell 4.5 points over the same comparison.

More recently, one of Quintana Roo's weekly tourism reports put Tulum hotel occupancy at only 48.5% during a summer week.

Hotels and Airbnbs operate differently, so this is a useful cross-check. When both sides of the accommodation market are struggling to fill rooms, weak performance cannot be blamed only on inexperienced Airbnb hosts or poor listing management.

Tulum itself currently has softer demand.

Tourist arrivals had already fallen 5.3% in 2025. The newer hotel data tells us the weakness did not simply disappear afterward.

Hotel market	Earlier first-half occupancy	Latest first-half occupancy	Change
Tulum	74.32%	66.18%	-8.13 pts
Playa del Carmen	77.05%	72.58%	-4.47 pts
Riviera Maya	76.63%	72.77%	-3.87 pts
Quintana Roo overall	75.82%	72.87%	-2.95 pts

Didn't Tulum Airport bring enough new tourists to fill all these Airbnbs?

No, Tulum Airport has not created enough additional demand to fill the accommodation supply built around the destination.

The airport was supposed to remove one of Tulum's biggest disadvantages: tourists previously had to fly into Cancún and travel overland for roughly two hours.

That improvement was real. Felipe Carrillo Puerto International Airport passed 1.2 million annual passengers very quickly after opening.

The latest numbers are much less encouraging.

According to AFAC airport statistics, the airport handled about 471,500 passengers during the first half of 2026, down 33.2% from roughly 705,400 during the same period a year earlier.

International traffic fell even harder, from 417,600 passengers to 247,100, a drop of 40.8%. Domestic traffic was down 22%.

The weakness continued into the final month of that first-half comparison, when total airport traffic fell almost 45% year over year.

There is one important nuance. Fewer passengers at Tulum Airport does not mean Tulum tourism fell by the same amount. Visitors can still arrive through Cancún and travel south.

But from an Airbnb investor's perspective, the original airport thesis clearly overshot reality. A major new airport improved access without producing a demand surge big enough to absorb the thousands of additional rooms and apartments already competing for tourists.

Did Tulum build too many condos for Airbnb investors?

Yes, Tulum built far too many small investment condos for the pace at which buyers and renters could absorb them.

The construction boom was huge. Softec data compiled by InfoHabitat shows units under construction rising from 1,466 in 2017 to 13,266 in 2023.

Available housing inventory reached 6,340 units in 2023, almost twice the 3,243 recorded in 2019.

Then sales slowed badly. Tulum recorded 3,487 housing sales in 2023 but only 1,711 in 2025, a decline of roughly 51% in two years.

The monthly sales pace per development also fell from 1.4 units in 2022 to 0.9 in 2025.

This connects directly to Airbnb because a large share of the new development was aimed at investment buyers rather than people looking for a conventional primary residence. Marketing repeatedly emphasized turnkey management, vacation-rental income and projected yields.

That created a feedback loop. Developers sold units by pointing to Airbnb demand, and every completed project then created more Airbnb competition for the investors who had already bought.

Residential indicator	Earlier level	Later level	Change
Units under construction	1,466 in 2017	13,266 in 2023	~9x
Available inventory	3,243 in 2019	6,340 in 2023	+95%
Annual home sales	3,487 in 2023	1,711 in 2025	-51%
Monthly sales per project	1.4 in 2022	0.9 in 2025	-36%

Are studios and one-bedroom Airbnbs the most oversupplied part of Tulum?

Yes, generic studios and one-bedroom condos look like the most crowded part of Tulum's Airbnb market.

The local real-estate industry has been unusually open about this. The Tulum chapter of AMPI said the market had accumulated roughly five to six years of inventory in studios and one-bedroom apartments.

Those are exactly the units that developers could package most easily as entry-level vacation-rental investments.

A studio also creates very little natural differentiation. Once a traveler filters Airbnb for two guests, a pool, air conditioning and the same neighborhood, dozens of similar units can appear within a narrow price range.

A large villa near the beach competes in a much smaller pool. A generic one-bedroom apartment in La Veleta or Aldea Zama has far more substitutes.

The economics get ugly quite quickly. A guest can switch properties over a $10 or $20 nightly difference, a weaker review score, a less attractive pool, poor road access or a few minutes of extra travel time.

Saying “Tulum Airbnb” as if every property belongs to the same market is therefore misleading. The deepest oversupply is concentrated in the products developers repeated most aggressively.

Does Tulum's low season expose just how crowded Airbnb has become?

Yes, Tulum's low season makes the Airbnb oversupply impossible to hide.

Airbtics describes Tulum as a seasonal market and shows monthly revenue varying sharply through the year. In its latest full-year period, weaker months generated roughly MXN15,700 for the typical property while stronger months exceeded MXN33,000.

So a strong month can produce more than twice the revenue of a weak one.

Previous AirDNA market data showed a similar occupancy swing, with winter occupancy around the mid-50% range before dropping toward the mid-30s in September.

Seasonality has always existed in Tulum, but a crowded market makes those weak months harsher.

An owner who needs occupancy to cover management fees, HOA charges, electricity, maintenance and financing cannot simply ignore three quiet months. Thousands of owners face the same problem at the same time, which pushes more discounted inventory onto Airbnb.

A property can therefore look healthy when someone annualizes January revenue and disappointing when we look at the full 12 months.

For anyone evaluating a Tulum Airbnb today, annual occupancy and annual RevPAR tell us much more than peak-season screenshots.

Can a really good Tulum Airbnb still beat the crowded market?

Yes, strong Tulum Airbnbs can still perform very well, but the gap between winners and average properties has become huge.

Airbtics' property-manager data gives us a useful example. Vacation In Tulum's tracked portfolio achieved roughly 52% occupancy and about MXN383,000 of annual revenue per listing, compared with around 48% occupancy and MXN235,000 for its wider benchmark at the time.

Top Rentals Mexico's tracked portfolio was much stronger again, with occupancy around 55% and annual revenue above MXN1.1 million per listing. Its properties also carried a much higher average nightly rate, so this is clearly a different product mix from the typical studio.

The spread exists even within the same neighborhood. An Airbtics comparison of roughly similar one-bedroom properties around Aldea Zama found occupancy ranging from about 28% to 70%.

A 42-point occupancy gap within a relatively narrow competitive set tells us how selective guests have become.

Location can help a lot. Airbtics' analysis of guest-review hotspots found properties close to Tulum beach clubs earning a large location premium relative to similar listings elsewhere.

But paying for a fashionable neighborhood alone will not fix a weak property. Aldea Zama itself contains both highly occupied and poorly occupied rentals.

These days, a successful Tulum Airbnb usually needs several advantages at once: a genuinely good micro-location, strong reviews, professional pricing, appealing design, reliable utilities and something that makes the property easier to choose than the dozens of alternatives beside it.

Is Tulum's Airbnb oversupply finally starting to clear?

Tulum's Airbnb market appears to be starting a correction, but the oversupply has not cleared yet.

AirDNA's latest Tulum, Quintana Roo dataset gives us the clearest evidence of a shakeout. Its active-listing count is down 69.4% year over year, while occupancy has recovered to 46%.

AirDNA's Greater Tulum market also shows active listings down 54%.

We should be careful with those percentages because AirROI currently counts 8,327 active listings and says supply increased 17.7%, while Airbtics was still showing annual listing growth earlier in the year.

A methodological change or a narrower definition of active supply could explain part of AirDNA's dramatic decline.

Still, some churn is clearly happening. Owners can remove a property from Airbnb, switch to medium-term rentals, use the condo themselves or put it up for sale. Weak operators also leave when revenue no longer covers the hassle and cost.

Regulation adds some pressure, although it probably will not solve the problem quickly. Quintana Roo has been tightening tourism registration and tax enforcement, and the state has regularized thousands of lodging properties. Tulum accounted for hundreds of those cases.

For now, the bigger correction mechanism is economic: weak listings lose bookings, cut prices, leave the active market or change strategy.

The physical condos remain in Tulum even after their Airbnb listings disappear. Many can come back onto the short-term-rental market whenever owners think conditions have improved.

So the market can shrink on a platform without removing the underlying capacity that created the oversupply in the first place.

So is Tulum too crowded with Airbnbs right now?

Yes. Tulum is currently too crowded with Airbnbs, especially in the huge pool of interchangeable studios and one-bedroom investment condos.

We can say that with fairly high confidence because several different parts of the market point in the same direction.

AirROI still counts more than 8,000 active short-term rentals and gives Tulum the second-largest listing pool among Mexican markets in its dataset. Airbtics previously measured Airbnb supply growing 23.4% in one year and more than doubling in three.

Demand has not kept up. Tulum tourist arrivals fell 5.3% in 2025, while official hotel occupancy subsequently dropped more than eight percentage points in the first half of 2026.

Pricing data shows how the market is adapting. AirDNA now sees occupancy recovering in its Tulum dataset, but the average daily rate is down 23% and RevPAR remains lower than a year earlier. Better occupancy bought with cheaper nights fits an oversupplied market working through excess capacity.

The condo market explains where much of that competition came from. Construction expanded nearly ninefold between 2017 and 2023, while home sales later fell by half. AMPI has spoken openly about several years of unsold studio and one-bedroom inventory.

Tulum Airport has not rescued that equation either. Passenger traffic at the airport fell by one-third in the latest first-half comparison, with international traffic down more than 40%.

None of this means a good Tulum Airbnb cannot make money. Some properties are still doing very well, and the huge performance gaps between comparable listings prove that quality and location matter enormously.

But the easy version of the Tulum Airbnb trade is gone for now.

Buying another generic condo, furnishing it nicely and assuming tourism growth will fill the calendar is a weak investment thesis in today's market. Tulum already has thousands of owners trying essentially the same strategy.

The correction has begun, which makes today's market slightly healthier than a pure peak-supply snapshot would suggest. Prices are adjusting, weaker listings are leaving and surviving properties are picking up more bookings.

There is still too much accommodation chasing the available demand, though. Until tourism grows faster than rental supply for a sustained period, or enough investor inventory permanently leaves the short-term-rental pool, Tulum should still be treated as an oversupplied Airbnb market.

Who is the author of this content?

THE LATINVESTOR

A team specialized in real estate investing in LATAM countries

We are a team of financial experts, legal professionals, developers, and local real estate specialists dedicated to helping people like you avoid mistakes when investing in real estate in a foreign place, particularly in Tulum. If you’d like to learn more about us, you can check our presentation page.