Cancún International handled 24.25 million passengers from January to October 2025, down from 25.21 million in the same period of 2024—about 959,000 fewer travelers. The year-to-date decline at Cancún is 3.8%, part of a broader 2.5% slide across ASUR’s Mexico airports. These are the operator’s official figures for October.
Drill into the mix and the softness is clearest on the long-haul side. International traffic at Cancún is down 4.3% year to date, while domestic is off 2.8%. Mexico’s overall October snapshot shows flat international flow and a small dip in domestic, reinforcing the picture of a muted year.
Cancún airport traffic
Why the step-down? Capacity and demand have both played a role. Mexico’s low-cost giant Volaris continues to juggle groundings tied to Pratt & Whitney GTF engine inspections, limiting available seats across the country. Management recently signaled those engine-related aircraft-on-ground issues won’t fully clear until 2027, a slow burn that keeps pressure on supply into next year.
On the demand side, ASUR has been flagging weaker performance on US routes through 2025. It’s not a collapse—more of a drag that shows up in monthly comps and in cautious airline scheduling. The company described “weak traffic” in Mexico this year and trimmed expectations accordingly on recent calls.
There’s also a geography shift within Quintana Roo. Tulum International is now a real factor. From January to August 2025, SECTUR reports 426,287 arrivals at Tulum, a flow that did not exist before late 2023 and inevitably pulls some travelers away from Cancún’s gates. Earlier in the year, ASUR’s CEO projected Tulum could approach 2.9 million passengers in 2025—an outlook later tempered as some US airlines pruned schedules—but the diversion effect on Cancún has been visible all year.
The softer airport counts align with other local metrics. Hotels in the wider Cancún–Riviera Maya area posted lower occupancy this summer versus last year, a sign that demand cooled after a post-pandemic surge and as new rooms kept coming online.
What to watch this winter
The next three months will test whether this is a reset or a rut. Airlines are entering the peak season with tighter fleets than they’d like and a selective approach to weaker routes, especially from the United States. If US demand remains choppy, carriers will protect yields rather than chase marginal volume, which could cap upside for Cancún even with the usual holiday bounce.
On the flip side, ASUR’s October report showed Mexico’s international traffic essentially flat year-over-year for the month, hinting that the worst of the year-to-date gap may be narrowing heading into the holidays. Cancún’s domestic base also remains large and resilient, which helps stabilize the numbers when long-haul wobbles.
The Tulum storyline is still evolving. After a rapid ramp-up, several US carriers trimmed some Tulum frequencies late summer and fall, suggesting the market is finding its level. Even so, with hundreds of thousands of passengers now using that airport in 2025, some of the diversion from Cancún is likely to persist. ASUR itself has acknowledged that Tulum’s ramp affects Cancún’s counts, and that normalization—not elimination—of the effect is the base case.
For now, the math is straightforward. Through October, Cancún is down nearly one million passengers versus last year, led by weaker international flow and an evolving network map in the state. Winter will tell us whether that gap closes—or becomes the new normal.
