Tulum used to be for backpackers. Now it’s ‘boho-chic’

Tourists take pictures in the panoramic view of the Caribbean Sea on the tour of the ruins of Tulum. Photo / Victoria Razo for The Washington Post

The rise of Instagram and Airbnb have influenced Tulum’s rapid transformation from backpackers’ paradise to hotel-dense tourism hub, writes Natalie Compton

When you’re floating in the balmy, turquoise water, parts of Mexico’s Quintana Roo coastline still look timeless.

Dense tangles of palm trees and shrubs line the soft, sandy beach. Walled ruins peer down from their limestone cliff. Pelicans fly in formation overhead. It’s easy to understand why hippies, backpackers and armchair archaeologists began flocking to this pocket of the Yucatán Peninsula in the 1970s.

A guide explains the history of the ruins of Tulum to tourists. Photo / Victoria Razo for The Washington Post

Once you swim back to shore and towel off, the fantasy of the untouched Tulum begins to fade. This patch of the Caribbean has been an ancient Maya trading hub, a quiet fishing village, a bohemian paradise, and a vacation spot for celebrities such as Leonardo DiCaprio and Paris Hilton. Today it retains elements of all these identities, plus a newer one: mainstream tourism hub.

Walk in either direction and you’ll find a steady stream of beach clubs and hotels ranging from thatched-roof cabanas to all-inclusive chains. There are tourists in thong bikinis and families enjoying picnics. Fragments of trash stick out from piles of seaweed. At dusk, the sunset could not be more beautiful.

The once-remote jungle has only recently become more accessible with the opening of a new train line and international airport, which recorded its millionth passenger in November. The 2020 census recorded Tulum’s population at 46,721 residents - up about 65% from 2010 - and local officials project a 447% population increase by 2050.

As major infrastructure projects near completion, the governor of Quintana Roo has declared a “New Era of Tourism” in the Mexican Caribbean, celebrating the rapid development of Tulum as a tremendous success. For many locals, the story of the city’s growth is more complicated. More tourism brings more income, but that has come at a cost to the environment, its inhabitants and their culture.

There are still magical places like Habitas, a beachfront hotel, restaurant and spa that blends into the tropical forest. And there is the Bahia Principe, a global brand with more than 700 rooms.

World-class restaurants like Arca and Hartwood work wonders with local ingredients. And there is Porfirio’s, owned by the same Cancún-based group as Señor Frog’s, where club music distracts from weak margaritas and flat salsa. The decor at long-running nightclub Gitano will wow you. When I went, men in the bathroom tried to sell me ecstasy and cocaine. (Gitano owner James Gardner said his employees don’t sell drugs, and the club doesn’t endorse drug use).

Dancers perform a show for the 11th anniversary of Gitano, a famous restaurant-bar in Tulum. Photo / Victoria Razo for The Washington Post

Tulum is developing so rapidly, some concerned parties say, that it runs the risk of losing what made it special.

“They’re killing the goose that laid the golden egg,” said Cynthia James, who co-owns the boutique hotel La Conchita. “They’re just going to keep building, and then pretty soon it’s just going to be another Miami.”

From beach camps to ‘boho chic’

Alejo Mantilla is from Mérida, the capital city of the neighbouring Yucatán state, and has been coming to Tulum since he was a kid.

As a young adult, he visited as a backpacker. Now 41, he works as a local guide and travel agent, leading bike tours in Tulum National Park to view the famous remnants of a thriving Mayan citadel.

In his early memories, “the beach was just a sand strip with a few huts and campgrounds,” he said.

He started noticing a change in the early 2000s, when his US$3 campsites started disappearing and hotels popped up in their place. Some new businesses began catering to a more affluent class of traveller, including jet-setters with eclectic tastes who wanted a place to unplug in between trips to St. Barts, Mykonos and Ibiza. They were into holistic wellness like the counterculture generation, Mantilla said, “but repurposed and remarketed as this fancy, boho-chic kind of thing.”

Soon after came the “hipsters,” Mantilla said, arriving from Brooklyn with the urge to experience Tulum while it could still be considered a hidden gem. With its lush flora, picturesque cenotes and boutique beach resorts, Tulum seemed made for Instagram.

Tourists eat at the Moro restaurant at Habitas facilities in Tulum. Photo / Victoria Razo for The Washington Post

James, the hotel owner, noticed a change around 2010 with the arrival of more luxury properties. The rise of Airbnb altered the dynamic, too, she said, attracting a younger visitors willing to take the two-hour ride from Cancún to attend electronic music festivals. The party scene exploded. Drug cartels supplied the new market. Noise pollution from jungle raves featuring lasers and acrobats disrupted the wildlife.

Now, “the partying is affecting us a lot,” Mantilla said. “I like festivals, but [there’s] so much drugs, so much money.”

Anticipation for the new airport drove another construction boom, which included an excess of luxury homes. Near the ruins where Mantilla leads tours, you can hear the whir of diesel generators that hotels located off the city’s power grid use to keep up with guests’ energy demands.

For Mantilla, that sound is a reminder of how the business of tourism has trumped the welfare of the environment. But he also recognises the hypocrisy of complaining too much.

“We come for work because we can make a good living here doing what we love, and in our free time, we use it to go to nature, dancing, swimming, the beach,” he said.

“I have some friends who complain a lot about the consumerism, but in the end, consumerism is what pays my bills.”

Ecotourism and corruption claims

Global chains have lined up along Tulum’s hotel zone, but some accommodations take more care to be eco-conscious.

I stayed at the local property for Habitas, where a biologist works as a sustainability director to minimise the property’s ecological footprint. There was no single-use plastic in my room, which was made from canvas like a safari tent.

When they bought a small property to create La Conchita, James and her husband, Jorge Rosales, hired Maya workers to help them remodel. They mixed cement by hand and thatched traditional palapa roofs. Because it was off the grid, like all of the beach hotels at that time, the couple had to truck in fresh water, build a septic system, install solar panels and use propane tanks for gas.

James, who lives in Santa Barbara, California, said in a phone interview that she has seen other owners who were less compelled to make the extra effort. She recalled a now-closed property that was popular with celebrities.

“It got all this publicity, but they just had their sewage going into the ocean,” she said.

A 2013 study found improper sewage disposal was a common practice among hotels, leading to contamination in the water supply. Waste management, both for trash and “grey water,” or wastewater from households and hotels, continues to be an issue.

As part of his guide work, Mantilla sometimes drives for wealthy travellers from San Francisco or Austin, picking them up from private villas or condos in La Veleta, a recently developed neighbourhood that attracts remote workers and digital nomads. Even though Mantilla sees that they spend a lot during their trips, he wishes tourist dollars had a more positive impact on the community.

“There’s no cleaning of the streets. … They don’t empty the trash cans,” Mantilla said. “The kind of things a tourist place should have taken care of - they don’t do it here.”

According to one Tulum municipality official, who spoke on the condition of annonymity so they wouldn’t jeopardise their job or risk retaliation from cartels, infrastructure struggles have multiple causes. They said there were not enough people trained in urban planning to shepherd Tulum’s growth. When builders run into logistical restrictions, they said the red tape may be ignored or bribed away.

“It’s not a bad place to live, but Tulum could be so much better,” they said.

Water pollution is one of the by-products of corruption, the official said. They don’t go to as many cenotes as they did as a child, when you could access the swimming holes for free.

“They were crystal-clear,” the official said. “Now you have to pay 250 pesos to get into a little hole full of tourists, and the water is stinky.”

A new era of tourism

On social media, Quintana Roo Gov. Mara Lezama Espinosa has said tourism’s “success translates into shared prosperity with social justice,” and regularly shares infrastructure updates with the hashtags #NuevaEraDeTurismo in #QuintanaRoo.

This new era was years in the making, but it coincided with another boost for interest in Tulum.

During the pandemic, the town saw a surge of Americans looking to escape shutdowns and isolation without travel restrictions.

“It became a big success,” Andrés Martínez, director of the state’s tourism council, said in a phone interview. Developers began building to meet new demand. Now, “there are big resorts in Tulum,” Martínez said.

Martínez is aware of concerns about overdeveloping the area - and is emphatic that building is being done responsibly.

Tulum is home to protected areas, such as the Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve, a Unesco World Heritage site, which covers some 520,000ha of coastline, bays, wetlands and forest, and houses precious wildlife. It remains “one of Mexico’s largest protected areas,” according to Unesco. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has promoted a recently passed Urban Development Programme (PDU) to “ensure orderly growth.”

“People travel here to see the blue water and the jungle,” Martínez said, adding that Tulum is “really strict on how we develop.”

The new Jaguar National Park was inaugurated in September, claiming land for conservation and adding a new museum to Tulum’s archaeology zone. However, there is a controversial hotel project located inside.

Tourists enter Jaguar National Park. Photo / Victoria Razo for The Washington Post

The bass thumps on

For most of Mexico’s history, Tulum was difficult to reach. If you fly into the new Felipe Carrillo Puerto International Airport, you can see why.

The last stretch of the flight covers a vast sea of greenery; there are few signs of humanity - not a house, not a road, just an occasional clearing burned into the landscape. Finally, the runway appears. The mass of jungle hugs its perimeter.

Francisco J. Rosado-May feels responsible for protecting that jungle, and the treasures it holds for his people.

Rosado-May is Yucatec Maya - the largest indigenous group of the Yucatán Peninsula - and the great-grandson of Gen. Francisco May, the last commander of the Maya forces in the Caste War of Yucatán, an indigenous uprising that ended in 1901. He lives about two hours southwest of Tulum, and he grew up visiting relatives here when it had just one restaurant and a few dozen houses.

Following in his ancestor’s footprint, Rosado-May has fought for the Yucatán in his own way. In 1991, he finished his PhD in biology at the University of California at Santa Cruz, and he returned home to Quintana Roo to help found the state’s first university. He’d later serve as its president, and he has continued researching indigenous food systems, agroecology and education.

In 2019, Rosado-May was part of a federal office tasked with asking the indigenous community for its input on Tren Maya’s construction, which drew criticism for its “inadequate public consultation.” The project has deforested huge segments of the Western Hemisphere’s largest remaining rainforests, destroying millennia-old Maya homes and temples, and polluting rural areas and underground water systems.

“The Maya people were not against the idea of having new ways for development,” he said. “But that was not a blank check for the Government to do whatever they wanted to do.”

Rosado-May, 69, says he’s not against having better infrastructure in the region, or tourism; it’s steamrolling any construction with a lack of concern for the outcome - to the natural environment or locals’ quality of life - that’s a problem.

“How are we going to solve the problem of grey water? How are we going to solve the problem of trash?” Rosado-May said. “It’s going to cost a lot more [later] than if they sit now and plan on how to invest in the future.”

I met with Rosado-May at Don Cafeto after the lunch rush. The garden patio was mostly empty, but the throbbing bass from the restaurant’s speakers was disrupting our conversation. The music would have made more sense at the beach or in the hotel zone than here in the “pueblo” side of Tulum, 20 minutes inland, where you’ll find auto body shops and cafes that cater to locals and tourists alike.

Rosado-May asked the staff to turn it down, and they obliged. But a few minutes later, an electronic tribal beat crescendoed again.

“That’s part of the development,” Rosado-May said with an exasperated laugh.