For years, tourists around the world have taken to social media to denounce the rather awful treatment they receive at Mexican airports. But now things have worsened.
With more than 500 operations between arrivals and departures, Cancun International Airport is receiving over 20 daily complaints regarding mistreatment and delays, according to REPORTUR.mx.
Common complaints include extreme wait times at immigration checkpoints (more than 2 hours), a lack of officials to process documents, missing connections and shuttle services, low-quality internet, and even extorsions perpetrated by immigration officers, according to local news outlet El Economista.
Fed up with the mistreatment of their customers, The Hotel Association of Cancún, Puerto Morelos, and Isla Mujeres sent a letter to Tourism Secretary Miguel Torruco, expressing “great concerns from the Quintana Roo hotel sector” regarding “situations” experienced by a rising number of travelers at Cancun International Airport, said President Jesús Almaguer in February.
“We continue to have an increase in complaints from United States and Latin American tourists upon entering the Cancun International Airport migration area. They’ve informed us about the lack of migration officials, exaggerated times to cross the filters, and even more worrisome, the mistreatment of the Colombian market by immigration agents,” reads the letter.
Juan Enrique Suárez Del Real Tostado, President of the Union of Tourism Secretaries (Asetur), stated they are closely monitoring the mistreatment tourists have suffered at the hands of immigration officials. He said he’d escalate matters to the Ministry of Interior to expose these facts.
“We have to give [tourists] adequate treatment. We understand that sometimes the work is so routine that it can generate a situation where we forget to provide that attention, but we are going to propose a precise system of immigration training.”
According to Suárez, airport officials have to “understand how much tourism means, but above all, the image they can generate,” he said.
But that can be a little bit late. 73 out of 115 reviews on TripAdvisor, rank Cancun International Airport as “Terrible.”
A family traveling on March 2024 said: “unorganised and long queue, not the best start to the holiday, luckily the rest of the trip made up for it…”
A group of friends also traveling in March 2024, said there were no parking slots available so they had to wait almost one hour to get off the plane: “Fourty five minute wait on the tarmac to get a gate, then 1hr to get through immigration. Emerge from baggage pick up to find a place to wait for friends arriving on a different flight. No place to sit down for however long it takes for our friends to emerge. No regard whatever for the comfort of travellers by the airport authority.”
Another family also complained about the excessive wait times at immigration: “Took us 2 hours to get through passport control, taking them initially 45 minutes to even bother putting people on the gates! A near further hour to then get through customs. Complete mayhem from start to finish, the worst airport I’ve ever passed through.”
Quintana Roo Governor Mara Lezama has reportedly met with federal and state authorities, hotel associations and the Southeast Airport Group (ASUR) to define steps that allow them to control security and streamline the entrance of tourists at immigration checkpoints, REPORTUR.mx revealed.