A new US$5 tax is being proposed for all cruise ship passengers visiting Mexico’s Quintana Roo. If approved, the new tax would come into force on the first day of January 2025.
The Riviera Maya News reports that during the state’s recent 2024 Fiscal Package meeting, the Congress of Quintana Roo proposed the creation of a new cruise ship tourist fee at a rate of US$5 per person. The Mexican state is home to two of the country’s most popular cruise ports, Cozumel and Costa Maya.
The additional tax would be paid at the time of cruise ship trip purchase and collected by cruise lines which would then forward the payments to the state.
Port in Cozumel, Mexico. (photo via Marina113 / iStock / Getty Images Plus)
“The state seeks to obtain greater resources to allocate them to investment projects to improve the infrastructure of our state and to do so, it requires implementing new sources of income that will allow financing the expense that comes with the increase in visitors to the area,” the proposal states.
According to Article 51 of the Law of Rights of the State of Quintana Roo, of the money that enters the state coffers, 30% goes to the Trust for the Attention of Natural Disasters.
Quintana Roo is one of Mexico’s states with the highest risk of hurricane impact during the Atlantic season which runs from June to November each year. The other 70% would be allocated to a new Trust for Tourism Infrastructure.
The number of cruise ship arrivals in the state decreased between January 1 and October 8, 2023, (1,576 in 2022 to 1,164 so far in 2023), but the number of passengers increased from 4.1 million to almost 4.3 million.
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