Quintana Roo
20.1% Q1 2024 growth (Mexico's highest); $20B Maya Train; Cancún 30M passengers (2024); Tulum airport opened 2024; Asian tourism surging.
Quintana Roo recorded Mexico's highest economic growth in Q1 2024 at 20.1%, driven by a 125.6% surge in construction tied to the $20 billion Maya Train railroad. The state topped national growth throughout 2023-2024, achieving 10.7% in Q4 2023—the only state with double-digit expansion. Cancún remains Mexico's busiest tourism gateway, welcoming over 30 million passengers in 2024 (7% increase), with 13 million arrivals in the first five months of 2025.
The Maya Train now connects Cancún, Playa del Carmen, and Tulum, aiming to distribute tourism beyond the saturated coast. The new Tulum International Airport opened in late 2024, with WestJet launching direct flights from Toronto, Montreal, and Calgary. Asian tourism is surging—China arrivals rose 38.8% to 187,726 visitors in 2024, while India, South Korea, and Japan each showed growth. The state's 2025 tourism promotion budget reached 750 million pesos.
By 2026, Quintana Roo will test whether infrastructure investment creates sustainable distribution or temporary construction boom. If Maya Train tourism spreads beyond Cancún and Tulum's hotel occupancy rebounds from 2025's economic-uncertainty slump, the state could model how mega-projects transform regional economies. If seaweed continues fouling beaches and US economic weakness persists, even world-class infrastructure may not offset underlying vulnerabilities.