Cancún: The Mexican government’s Frankenstein

This resort city is the best and worst of what central planning has to offer.

It’s been a disappointing year for Cancún airport. In the first half of 2024, it received just under 19 million passengers—fewer compared to the preceding couple of years. But poor results are in the eye of the beholder: These numbers still make the resort city’s airport one of Mexico’s biggest passenger hubs by far—with over 40% of US arrivals arriving through this one point—as well as one of the country’s biggest cargo centres.

It all started there, at the airport, over half a century ago, when a thin strip of land sometimes referred to on maps as Kankún, with a population of about 2,500 people, was given a world class runway. Today, it is a city of about one million people without counting the tens of millions that visit each year.

If Mexico is a tourism powerhouse, then Cancún is the generator that runs at its very core. At 45 million foreign visitors in 2023, Mexico made up close to 40% of Latin America’s total tourist numbers. At 20 million international tourists, Cancún captured almost 45% of Mexico’s own total—and that’s without counting the 12 million domestic tourists that landed alongside the foreigners.