View of the breakwater area of Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo. For this year, the municipality expects a 35 percent increase in the economic spillover from tourism.
Starting this year, the municipality of Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo, will regulate Airbnb rentals, since property owners must request a license from the city council, which will determine in which areas the service can be offered, said Estefanía Mercado, mayor of the town in an interview.
It is a project prepared by the treasury to avoid the increase in rents, since in the entity there are 18 thousand places rented through the aforementioned platform.
“If we don’t regulate Airbnb and tourist licenses, rents will immediately go up, and it will be impossible to live in the city,” he said.
“It is another great challenge for this year and the treasury is already working. Airbnb is going to be regulated; that is, it is not what they want. There are certain areas where it will be allowed and others where it will not,” he said.
“New York, for example, has already regulated it. Why? Because there are many people who are homeless and there have been many invasions,” he said.
The mayor explained that the city council will have the power to deny the permit if the area where a home is intended to be rented through Airbnb does not have a tourist vocation. Not having the license will imply closure, fines and surcharges. “Now there is no license, it is completely free,” he added.
On the other hand, Mercado stressed that Playa del Carmen is ready to receive an economic spill this year at least 35 percent greater than that of 2025 because the investment made in March 2024 to combat insecurity, of one thousand 200 million pesos, is already bearing fruit.
In 2025, the economic spillover from tourism in the municipality was 8,400 million pesos, 35 percent more than in 2024. This town is the one that generates the most income from this area in the Riviera Maya.
“Playa del Carmen today is the safest municipality in Quintana Roo and one of the safest in the country because a year ago an investment was made for equipment for our police.”
He explained that in Playa del Carmen there are more than 470 patrol cars (“one on each corner”) and a helicopter, with which intentional homicides have decreased by 46 percent in a comparison from October 2025 to date.
The standard established by the United Nations is 300 police officers per thousand inhabitants, and in Playa del Carmen there are 335.
The official indicated that the perception of insecurity has dropped two points, since intelligence teams deployed on Fifth Avenue, the main corridor of the state, coordinated by the National Guard, the Army and the Navy, have joined the strategy. “With all these advances, we are ready to receive all types of tourism and not only World Cups.”
He explained that the municipal government is negotiating a collaboration agreement with taxi drivers to apply fixed rates and avoid extortion.
“We are building this agreement to be prepared before the World Cup arrives and after it,” he said.
In order to reduce the prices that the local population has for living in a high-value tourist area, the Fifth Avenue Board will be created to agree with the shops discounts for the inhabitants of the municipality.
In turn, the Ministry of Economic Development of the municipality will launch this year the Playenses Premises Program, which will give a discount card to inhabitants of the locality, based on the records of the National Electoral Institute, which will be linked to all the companies that provide tourist services in Playa del Carmen, so that the costs are lower than those paid by tourists.
In addition, the board of trustees, made up of businessmen and representatives of civil society, will receive the income from the advertising that the companies install on Fifth Avenue and will decide the destination of those resources.
Source: La Jornada
