Greater competition for Asur
Tulum Airport has the potential to take away passengers from Cancun and Cozumel, mainly, and this is not a new story for Asur, which, given the potential loss of passengers, has warned that it would have to reduce its investments.
Cancun Airport, operated by Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste (Asur), served more than 30 million users for the first time. Between this complex, the Cozumel Airport and the Merida Airport, the airport operator receives around 34 million annual passengers in the Riviera Maya.
The construction of an airport is a project that has been considered since 2009, and a tender was even launched that was declared void, which prevented the project from continuing. Since then, Asur warned that although it could not predict the effect of a new terminal in the region, for 2010 it was agreed with the then Ministry of Communications and Transportation (SCT) that the master development programs -that is, the investments at airports– and the maximum rates in the three months after the granting of the concession for the new airport.
In recent times, the airport group has not given any further clues about this process, but it has given signs that the start-up of a new airport will affect its master development plan, which by law must be presented with a five-year horizon, and which in this five-year period implied a total investment of 12,306 million pesos.
“We have made our estimate of how much this airport will have [Felipe Carrillo Puerto] and what will be the effect on our Cancun airport. But (…) we will be discussing this towards the second half of this year”, said Adolfo Castro, CEO of Asur, at the beginning of the year, in a call with analysts to discuss the results of the last quarter of 2022.
For Fernando Gómez Suárez, an analyst in the aviation sector, the rush of passengers from the new Tulum airport would not only be in terms of volumes, but also in terms of spending, due to the category of tourists that visit this Caribbean destination and that, beyond a subject of costs, they would save transfer times.
“The socioeconomic profile of this sector is of high economic benefit. Normally the people who go to Tulum and the Riviera Maya are retired people, mainly from the United States, Spain, Germany, England; This entails a very different economic impact than the spring breakers“, Explain.
But Tulum Airport will not be like others. Like the AIFA, it will have a military air base that will have to coexist with civilian operations, which in the eyes of the industry is usually not very functional.
“The Cancun Airport is an example of a well-operated airport, in constant growth and evolution. Tulum is going to be a purely regional airport, and Cancun has to give and distribute”, considers Juan Carlos Machorro, an expert partner in aeronautical and airport law at the firm Santamarina y Steta.
Mexican Aviation vs. commercial airlines
Competition will also be given for commercial airlines. Viva Aerobus announced five routes to the Tulum airport, while Aeroméxico will fly from the AICM. For specialists, this denotes an interest in the region, but in terms of available capacity, it represents a challenge, since the delay in the arrival of some aircraft is still being faced, which could also be used for more profitable markets such as the United States. once Category 1 of aviation safety is recovered.
Therefore, Tulum will have the opportunity to attract more flights, but it must be competitive in terms of infrastructure and other costs, such as the Airport Use Fee, elements that will be decisive for airlines to consider placing planes in that terminal instead. from Cancun.
“Depending on the infrastructure capacity that Tulum has, we could talk about the capacity it will have to absorb that demand,” concludes Gómez Suárez.