Running vacation rentals in Valladolid, Mexico, where nearly seven in ten Airbnb guests come from abroad
If you manage or clean vacation rentals in Valladolid, you're working in a town that had 743 active Airbnb listings as of August 2026, up 34.8% from a year earlier, according to Airbtics. Over the same twelve months the median occupancy of those listings slipped to 37%, and 68.7% of guests came from outside Mexico, mostly from the United States. Upbridge's AI operations assistant, Cleo, works over WhatsApp with vacation rental operators and cleaning companies and organizes the cleanings and the inventory for each place.
The rules here
As of October 23, 2026 we found no Valladolid town hall ordinance for homes rented through platforms. There is, though, a public complaint from the town's hotels.
| Topic | What it says | Status | Since | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| State rules | Yucatán has no law written for vacation rentals. What changed in the lodging tax in 2026, and who has to file an audited tax report, is on the Yucatán page. | No specific law | 2026 | Yucatán |
| Valladolid hoteliers' request | José Víctor Sánchez González, who chairs Valladolid's hotel and hostel association, called the town's lodging supply "súper exagerada" (wildly oversupplied) and asked for the same rules for hotels and platforms. He said he isn't trying to push the platforms out. The article carries no response from the town hall or the state. | No specific law | August 2026 | Diario de Yucatán |
The complaint has numbers behind it. From January to August, Valladolid's hotel occupancy was 45.9% in 2024, 42.9% in 2025 and 38.3% in 2026, according to the state tourism office, Sefotur. Over roughly the same stretch, Airbnb listings grew by more than a third in a year.
What the SAT, Mexico's tax authority, withholds on each platform booking is the same nationwide, and we cover it on the national page.
This is not legal or tax advice, and Upbridge does not file anything for you: no registrations and no tax returns.
How it works on the ground
Hotels and rentals host different people. Of the 174,200 people who stayed overnight in Valladolid hotels between January and August 2026, 118,670 were Mexican, Sefotur reports. Airbnb runs the other way, with Airbtics counting nearly seven foreigners in every ten guests. So your arrival instructions will often be read in English.
Airbtics puts the peak of demand in February and the low point in May, which in Yucatán is the hot month. May is a good time for deep cleans, servicing the air conditioning and swapping linens, since you take hardly any nights away from anyone.
Valladolid has a Tren Maya station. In June 2024 MID CityBeat timed the ride from Mérida at an hour and 45 minutes, plus about 20 minutes from the station to downtown, with a 150-peso taxi. The access road to the station runs about two kilometers from Avenida Zací Hual, and when it opened the Diario de Yucatán reported drivers missing the turn. If your guest is coming by train, it helps them to know ahead of time how to get from the platform to your door.
The power goes out, too. In June 2025 a storm left Valladolid's ISSSTE clinic without electricity for more than 24 hours, PorEsto reported, and the governor and the CFE, the national power utility, pointed to a new plant being built in town. After a long outage, someone has to check the fridge and the AC in each house before the next guest walks in.
Cenote Zací sits right in the town center, and Suytún, X'keken and Samulá are about seven kilometers out, according to Forbes México. A guest who swims in two cenotes in one day can come back with two sets of wet towels, and the laundry feels it.
Where Upbridge fits
In each house's guest guide we cover how to get there from the Tren Maya station, how to get in and which cenotes are close by. Since most of your guests come from abroad, we write it in English and Spanish, and in other languages if you ask. The guest opens it on their phone.
In the photo checklist you can make checking the fridge and the AC a required step, especially after a storm, and when the clean is done you get a report with the time of every photo. In May that same list can repeat on its own at every house for the deep clean.
With per-property inventory, what was used is deducted after each stay based on the products you set up, and you get an alert in the app, by email and on WhatsApp when the soap or the toilet paper runs low at any house.
If you run a cleaning company in Valladolid
With more listings and lower occupancy, each owner has fewer checkouts a week, so to fill a day your team needs houses from several clients. With the cleaning company account you pull all of their iCals or PMS calendars into one, and every client stays yours, with no fee per job.
Questions about rentals in Valladolid
How many Airbnb rentals are there in Valladolid?
Airbtics counted 743 active listings with data through August 2026, at a median occupancy of 37%. Other counts come out different because they include more platforms or measure a different month; the June 2026 one is on the Yucatán page.
How do you get from the Tren Maya station to downtown Valladolid?
The station is about 20 minutes from the center, and in June 2024 a taxi cost 150 pesos, according to MID CityBeat. Confirm the fare before you get in.
How are Valladolid's hotels doing?
Their January-to-August occupancy fell from 42.9% in 2025 to 38.3% in 2026, according to Sefotur's August report. That figure counts hotels only.
Sources
Checked on October 23, 2026
- Airbtics, Valladolid profile with listings, occupancy and guest origin; covers September 2025 to August 2026, updated October 16, 2026.
- Sefotur Yucatán, August 2026 monthly report (PDF, in Spanish), occupancy and visitor tables by destination, published September 2026.
- Diario de Yucatán, Wendy Ucán Chan, “Denuncian que hay ventaja fiscal de hospedaje Airbnb en Valladolid” (in Spanish), August 7, 2026.
- MID CityBeat, Stephanie Carmon, “First MID CityBeat Maya Tren Experience: The Pros & Cons of the Merida-Valladolid Ride”, June 11, 2024.
- Diario de Yucatán, Juan Antonio Osorio, report on the Valladolid Tren Maya station before it opened (in Spanish), December 30, 2023.
- PorEsto, Víctor Ku, “Apagón deja sin luz al ISSSTE de Valladolid por más de 24 horas” (in Spanish), June 26, 2025.
- Forbes México, “Conoce el Pueblo Mágico de Yucatán que resguarda impresionantes cenotes” (in Spanish), March 9, 2022.