Cancun and the Caribbean on Points: The Cash That Survives

The cash lines a points trip to Cancun keeps

A Mexico trip on points splits into the part points can pay and the part they cannot. Points pay for a fare and a room night. The charges below are priced in money in the sources read for this page. Mexico adds three government charges of its own: the airport use charge (the TUA) that the Mexico City airport notice applies to departing international passengers; the federal immigration right for visitors, the Derecho de No Residente, which Article 8 of the Ley Federal de Derechos says air carriers collect and remit for foreigners arriving by air; and a state charge on foreign visitors that is paid separately, online, through the Quintana Roo portal. The United States adds its own on the way out and on the way home. Add the hotel's add-ons, and a trip that looked fully paid for ends up with a list of cash lines, which this page prices one by one and totals for the lines it names.

Sorting them by who sets the amount shows what can be changed. The US lines are federal charges set per passenger and tied to routing. The Mexican airport charge is an airport tariff registered with Mexico's federal civil aviation agency, and the Derecho de No Residente is a federal right set in pesos by statute. The sources read do not say how these charges apply to award tickets, so airport and routing are the levers, and the booking screen shows what your own ticket carries. The VISITAX is set by the state of Quintana Roo in its Law of Rights and is owed by each foreign visitor entering the state. The resort fee belongs to the hotel, and the chain's award rules decide whether it is waived. Tips, ground transfers and extras belong to you.

• US international air tax and TSA fee: federal rates, per passenger, printed by the FAA, the IRS and the TSA.
• US arrival fees on the way home: the immigration inspection, customs and agricultural inspection fees per arriving passenger. Separately, on the way out, a passenger facility charge of up to $4.50 where the US departure airport charges one.
• Mexican airport use charge (TUA): an airport tariff, stated in dollars in the Mexico City notice; how your ticket collects it is a question for the booking screen.
• Mexican Derecho de No Residente: 983 pesos per visitor under Article 8, fraction I, collected by air carriers for foreigners arriving by air.
• Quintana Roo VISITAX: a state charge on foreign visitors, paid through the official portal or through companies the state tax service has authorised.
• Resort or destination fees: charged by each hotel, waived or not depending on the chain's award terms.
• Extra-person charges at all-inclusives: charged by the resort, and the chain's award terms decide how many guests the points night covers.
• Tips, transfers and anything not in the package: your own spending, with no points rule attached.

The general logic of which charges survive an award is laid out in award taxes and carrier surcharges. This page applies it to one destination and adds the lines specific to Cancun: the state VISITAX, the Mexican entry right and the Mexican airport charge.

The Quintana Roo VISITAX: mandatory, children included, priced in UMA

The VISITAX is easy to leave out of a trip plan, and the state's own portal is blunt about it. The portal's FAQ says the tax is mandatory and must be paid by all foreign tourists, and cites Article 51 octies of the state's Law of Rights. Asked whether it applies to Cozumel, the FAQ answers that the payment must be paid by all foreign tourists who visit Quintana Roo, regardless of their way of departure. Asked whether children and infants pay, given that there is no adult or child rate, it answers "all foreign tourists must pay for this." The FAQ lists no age exemption, and no payment by points appears on the pages read. For a family of four, that reads as four payments.

The portal describes itself as the State Government application for the payment of contributions from foreign tourists. Its FAQ says you can pay through the official portal or through companies authorised by the SATQ (the state tax service), that a receipt with a QR code can be recovered by entering each passport number individually, and that payment information and the ability to re-download the QR voucher will be available at least one year after the departure date. The practical rule is one passport, one record: enter each traveler separately and save the codes before leaving home.

The amount comes from the law; the FAQ page read prints no figure. Article 51-Octies of the Ley de Derechos del Estado de Quintana Roo, in the Congress PDF whose header says the last reform was published on December 16, 2025, sets the charge for foreign visitors entering the State at 2.50 UMA, for the use of the state's public-domain real property. The Congress site's listing of the law showed no 2026 reform when checked on October 28, 2026. Article 1 of the same law says rights denominated in UMA are paid in pesos by multiplying the amount in UMA by the unit's value on the relevant date. INEGI publishes the daily UMA as 117.31 pesos from February 1, 2026, which is the value in force on October 28, 2026. That makes 2.50 × 117.31 = 293.275 pesos, which is 1,173.10 pesos for four (4 × 293.275). Rounded to the centavo it is 293.28 pesos each, which this guide uses for the per-person figure; the law does not state a rounding rule, so the portal's own figure governs. The law exempts foreign visitors who enter the state through its southern border, and the next article, 51-Nonies, creates a separate charge of five US dollars for cruise passengers, whose proof of payment exempts them from the 51-Octies charge.

Converting to dollars needs an exchange rate, and the rate on the day you pay decides the result. The bill below uses an illustrative 18.50 pesos per dollar, which gives $15.85 per person and, at four times that rounded figure, $63.40 for four (1,173.10 pesos ÷ 18.50 is $63.41). That rate is a stated input, not a quotation and not a sourced rate. Confirm the amount, and the currency it is charged in, on the portal on the day you pay.

Two details are worth settling before you pay. Pay only on the official portal or through companies the SATQ has authorised, since the FAQ names those as the places to pay. And keep the QR code as a screenshot as well as a PDF, since the airport is the wrong place to discover your phone has no signal.

Mexico's airport use charge and entry fee, and where they may show up

Mexico City's airport published a 2026 notice on its airport use charge, the TUA, and it is the cleanest official wording this guide could read. The notice was issued after Mexico's federal civil aviation agency (AFAC) registered the 2026 rates. It says the international TUA applies to passengers who board at any airport if their final destination is abroad, that the rates are expressed in US dollars and converted to pesos monthly using the previous month's average exchange rate, and that a TUA of $0.00 applies to passengers up to two years old, to foreign diplomatic representatives in cases of reciprocity, to passengers in transit and connection as the transport ministry determines, and to certain aviation crew.

That notice sets Mexico City's international rate at $58.09, and the domestic rate at $30.59, for April 1 to December 31, 2026. It is not Cancun's rate: the notice covers the Mexico City airport only. This guide looked for an official Cancun tariff page and did not find one stating a 2026 figure, so it does not print one. What the Mexico City notice does show is a structure: a per-passenger charge, set in dollars, applied by boarding passenger and final destination, with exempt categories. It does not establish that Cancun's tariff has the same structure. The illustration below uses a placeholder of $40 per passenger and says so.

Whether the charge appears inside the taxes line of an award booking or is collected separately is not stated in the notice. The practical test is simple: read the taxes and fees line on the booking screen before any transfer, and ask whether it contains a Mexican airport charge for the trip home. If the cash due is above what the US taxes explain, ask the airline or program what the difference contains.

Mexico's federal entry fee is a separate line. Article 8, fraction I, of the Ley Federal de Derechos sets 983.00 pesos for the "Visitante sin permiso para realizar actividades remuneradas", the visitor category without permission for paid work. The consolidated law, whose header says the last reform was published in the Diario Oficial on November 7, 2025, shows that fraction as reformed on that date, and the decree says it enters into force on January 1, 2026. The article adds that the Secretaria de Gobernacion will set the procedure for identifying visitors without permission for paid work who travel for tourism, and that for foreigners arriving by air the fraction I right "deberá ser recaudado y enterado por las empresas de transporte aéreo internacional de pasajeros", which means it must be collected and remitted by international passenger air carriers. The only exemption printed for fractions I and II is for drivers or operators of freight vehicles who enter solely to load or unload at border customs; the article lists no exemption for minors. This guide did not search other Mexican laws or regulations for exemptions, and the sources read do not say where the amount appears on an award ticket. For four travelers it is 3,932 pesos, which is $212.54 at the illustrative 18.50 pesos per dollar ($53.14 each).

A family with a toddler gets one exception in the Mexico City notice: passengers up to two years old pay a TUA of $0.00. Whether Cancun's tariff has the same exemption is a question for that airport's own schedule, so check the infant's line on the confirmation before assuming it. Article 8 as printed gives no age exemption for the 983-peso entry right, so the illustration charges all four travelers.

The US side: air tax, TSA fee and arrival fees

Several federal charges can appear on a trip from a US airport to Cancun, and this page prices four groups of them. The first two apply to a nonstop on the way out and are printed rates rather than estimates. The FAA's rate sheet, headed "Rates effective as of January 1, 2026 for CY2026", lists the international arrival and departure tax at $23.40 per passenger, indexed to the Consumer Price Index. The IRS instructions for Form 720 say that for calendar year 2026 the section 4261 excise tax on any amount paid for international air transportation, if the transportation begins or ends in the United States, is generally $23.40. The statute's printed base is $12.00, which the IRS and FAA give as $23.40 for 2026 after indexing.

The TSA fee works on a different rule. TSA's Security fees page says the September 11 Security Fee is currently $5.60 per one-way trip in air transportation that originates at an airport in the U.S., except that the fee imposed per round trip shall not exceed $11.20. The outbound flight originates at a US airport and the return from Cancun does not, so on the wording as written the fee lands once, on the outbound leg. The page does not work through a Cancun example; that reading is this guide's. The illustration's TSA line is therefore four fees of $5.60, or $22.40 for the family.

How a round trip is counted is the part the sources leave open. The FAA calls the charge an "arrival and departure tax". The IRS instructions and 26 U.S.C. 4261(c)(1), which taxes "any amount paid (whether within or without the United States) for any transportation of any person by air, if such transportation begins or ends in the United States", both attach it to transportation that begins or ends in the US, per passenger. None of them states a count for a round trip. This guide assumes one charge for each direction, which is eight charges of $23.40, or $187.20, for four people: the outbound flight begins in the US and the return ends there. Your confirmation shows how your own itinerary was taxed. The same FAA sheet lists a domestic flight segment tax of $5.30 per passenger per segment. The sources read do not say whether a US connection on an international ticket is taxed that way, so the illustration assumes $0 on a nonstop.

The way home adds three inspection fees; the passenger facility charge, if any, belongs to the US airport the trip leaves from and is covered after them. The immigration inspection fee comes from 8 U.S.C. 1356(d): the Attorney General "shall charge and collect $7 per individual for the immigration inspection of each passenger arriving at a port of entry in the United States", aboard a commercial aircraft or commercial vessel. The customs passenger arrival fee in 19 CFR 24.22(g) is printed as $5.50 "as adjusted"; CBP's notice CBP Dec. 26-14, published for Fiscal Year 2027 and required as of October 1, 2026, lists the adjusted amount as $7.61 (the Fiscal Year 2026 notice listed $7.39). The agricultural quarantine and inspection fee in 7 CFR 354.3(f) lists $3.98 for an international air passenger from October 1, 2026 (it was $3.84 from October 1, 2025), and the same paragraph says the fee applies to infants or toddlers travelling without a separate ticket, whether in assigned seats or held in an adult's lap. Together that is $7.00 + $7.61 + $3.98 = $18.59 per person, or $74.36 for four. The customs and agricultural fees list exceptions for crew, diplomats and similar categories that this page treats as not applying to a family on holiday, and none of the sources read says where these amounts appear on an award booking.

The passenger facility charge is the last US line. The FAA's PFC page says the program "allows the collection of PFC charges up to $4.50 for every eligible passenger at commercial airports controlled by public agencies", and that "PFCs are capped at $4.50 per flight segment with a maximum of two PFCs charged on a one-way trip or four PFCs on a round trip, for a maximum of $18 total." Because the page says "up to", an airport may charge less. This guide includes one PFC per traveler at the cap, $4.50 × 4 = $18.00, as a labelled illustration input, on the assumption that the nonstop's only US enplanement is the outbound flight. Confirm the amount on your ticket.

The first three lines in the table are published federal rates, and they add to $283.96 for the family ($187.20 plus $22.40 plus $74.36). The passenger facility charge is an input at its printed cap. Nothing in the sources read describes a hotel, bank or loyalty program waiving any of these lines, and the ticket's tax line shows what your itinerary carries. Routing is the one lever you hold.

Resort fees on award nights, chain by chain

A resort or destination fee is a hotel charge for amenities the hotel decides to bundle. The three chains read for this guide word their award rules differently, so each rule below is taken from the chain's own terms.

Hilton's own all-inclusive guidance, on a page dated August 20, 2026, answers the question directly: "Resort fees are waived on reward stays booked entirely with Hilton Honors Points." The wording is about stays paid entirely with points. The same page describes the Points & Money feature as allowing members to combine nearly any combination of points and cash, so a Points & Money booking is a different transaction, and its cash-due line should be read before assuming the fee is gone.

Marriott's Program Rules, section 3.2.f, say an Award Redemption Stay includes the cost of a guest room, room tax, service charge and extra-person charges (except at eligible all-inclusive properties), and that all other charges, including incidentals and resort fees, are the member's responsibility. Separately, a footnote to the Free Night Award earned as an Annual Choice Benefit says the member may be responsible for additional mandatory resort fees at properties where they apply. At All-Inclusive Resorts, section 3.2.f says something different, and that exception is the subject of the next section.

Hyatt's terms, in clause 12, say resort, destination or facility fees, where charged by the hotel or resort, will be waived for members redeeming a Free Night Award, and the same clause says the benefit does not apply to a Points + Cash Award. Clause 12 also says the benefit is not available at a property whose Supplemental Terms indicate as much. A separate clause says benefits that would otherwise be complimentary may be included within a resort fee, which is then not waived except as the terms expressly provide. The live Hyatt page returned an access error to automated requests, so the terms were read from a web archive copy captured October 22, 2026 (the September 16, 2026 capture carries the same clause 12 wording). Confirm the wording on the live page and on the specific resort's booking screen.

None of the three pages read prints a resort fee for a Cancun property. The illustration uses a placeholder of $40 per night, or $280 for seven nights. That number is a stated input, not a Cancun quote, and the point of the comparison is the gap between zero and a fee, not the fee's size.

Cash to set aside before the trip

• Read the taxes and fees line on the award booking screen and ask whether it includes the Mexican airport charge and the 983-peso entry right for each foreign traveler.
• Write down the US international air tax and TSA count for your actual routing, including any connection, and add the US arrival inspection fees on the return ($18.59 per person at the rates read) and any passenger facility charge at your US departure airport.
• Pay the VISITAX once per traveler, children included, on the official portal, and save every QR code. Budget 2.50 UMA each, which is 293.28 pesos at the UMA in force on October 28, 2026, before the exchange rate.
• Convert the pesos to dollars at the rate on the day you pay, and check that the portal's amount matches.
• Check each hotel's resort-fee line on a points quote, and read the cash-due line on any Points & Money booking.
• At an all-inclusive, confirm how many guests the points night covers and what the third and fourth guest cost per night.
• Keep an envelope of cash for tips, transfers and anything outside the package.

All-inclusive on points: who the award night covers

All-inclusive pricing changes the arithmetic in a way the first four sections do not. At an all-inclusive, the rate bundles the room, food and drink, so the cash a points night replaces is larger, and so is the risk that the points night covers fewer people than your family has.

Marriott's program rules draw this line explicitly. At All-Inclusive Resorts, the award covers the all-inclusive package, including the standard room, room tax, service charge, resort fee and standard food and beverage, for up to two people. Extra-person charges for the third, fourth or more guests in the room are an additional fee, and the member must tell the resort the correct number of guests and the ages of any children. The rules add that the company can adjust the room rate to reflect the correct guest count. For a family of four, that is two people covered and two paying, for every night of the stay.

Hilton lists all-inclusive resorts that take points, and its page of August 20, 2026 gives starting-from prices: Hilton Cancun Mar Caribe All-Inclusive Resort and Hilton Cancun, an All-Inclusive Resort, from 100,000 points a night, with Zemi Miches Punta Cana and Mangrove Beach Corendon Curaçao from 98,000. Those are starting prices. The page says redemption rates may vary and are influenced by factors including travel dates, availability, room type, special events and the size of the travel party, and that the points required are displayed at the time of booking. The page does not state how many guests a standard reward night covers, so the family's occupancy has to be checked on the booking screen rather than assumed.

• Count heads before dates: ask the booking screen what it charges for the third and fourth guest, and for children by age.
• Compare against a cash all-inclusive quote for four, not a room-only rate, since that is what the points night replaces.
• Use the sibling page on all-inclusive resorts on points for the property-level comparison; this page only totals the cash around it.

A short example of why occupancy matters. If an illustrative extra-person charge is $60 per person per night, two extra guests for seven nights is $840 of cash on top of a 700,000-point stay (seven nights at the 100,000-point starting price). That would take the cash in the first bar below from $937.90 to $1,777.90, about 1.9 times as much. The $60 is a stated input to replace, not a Marriott or Hilton rate. The structure is the finding: Marriott's rules price the third and fourth guests separately from the points.

The family's bill, stacked

The chart puts nine cash lines side by side for two versions of the same week. The top bar is the case where the resort fee is waived, as under Hilton's wording for stays booked entirely with points. The bottom bar is a case where the fee is payable, as under Marriott's section 3.2.f for an ordinary property, with the placeholder fee. At a Marriott all-inclusive the same section covers the resort fee for up to two people, and the extra-person charges described above are not in either bar. Everything else is identical: four people, a nonstop each way, seven nights, a US airport of origin.

Of the nine lines, three are published US federal rates (the air tax, the TSA fee and the inspection fees), two are Mexican charges set in pesos by published law (the Derecho de No Residente and the VISITAX, converted at an illustrative exchange rate), and four are stated inputs: the US passenger facility charge at its $4.50 cap, the Mexican airport charge at $40 each, the resort fee at $40 a night (lower bar only) and $200 for tips, transfers and extras. Replace those with what your own booking screens show.

What the total includes and what it leaves out matters as much as the number. It includes only the nine lines named here. It leaves out the fare and room that the points pay for, baggage and seat fees, carrier-imposed surcharges, meals and drinks outside the package, ground transport beyond the lump sum, and any destination or lodging levy this page did not read. A real booking screen may show more or fewer lines, so treat the total as a worked example of the method, and the confirmation as the test.

Read the bars for what moves. All lines except the resort fee are the same in both versions and come to $937.90, and the one segment that changes between the bars is the resort fee, which is why the chain's award terms are worth reading before comparing two stays. The total is a worked example of the nine lines named here; a real booking can add lines this page did not price.

The wider Caribbean: what carries over from Cancun

This guide read no Caribbean government's tax pages, so it prints no island figure; a single regional number would be false precision. Any departure charge, accommodation levy or entry fee is set by that destination, and each needs its own check on that government's official page or on the booking confirmation. What this page can give you is the checklist of lines to price and the chain rules that apply wherever you land. For San Juan, the same distance charts are priced from six mainland cities in San Juan on points.

The US lines in the sources attach to routing, not to the destination's name: the international air tax to transportation that begins or ends in the United States, the TSA fee to the leg that originates at a US airport, and the inspection fees to passengers arriving in the US from abroad. The resort-fee rules in the previous section are written as program rules, and nothing in the text read limits them by country, so Hilton's waiver on all-points stays and Marriott's treatment of all-inclusives are stated for the program rather than for Cancun. What changes is the destination's own government charge, which you read from that government's page, or from the confirmation itself.

Hilton's page of August 20, 2026 lists all-inclusives in Curaçao and the Dominican Republic from 98,000 points a night, which sets the scale of the points side. For any island, the working test is the same as for Cancun: price the taxes on the booking screen before moving points, find the destination's own charge on an official government page, and ask the hotel what is in the nightly rate.

• Departure or airport charge: check whether the ticket's tax line contains it before transferring.
• Entry, tourism or environmental levy: find out on the government's own page whether it is paid online, like the VISITAX, or collected another way.
• Accommodation tax: Marriott's rules list room tax as part of an Award Redemption Stay; Hilton's page read does not say, so check the quote.
• Resort fee: governed by the chain's award rule, as in the previous section.

If the trip is closer to home, the same method applies in a simpler form. Hawaii on points works the domestic version: no international air tax and no VISITAX, though the FAA sheet lists a separate tax for flights between the continental United States and Hawaii, and the same award-tax and resort-fee reading applies.

Where the flight points come from, and when to move them

Cash lines decide how much of the trip points can pay for, but the flight's points still have to come from somewhere. Further south the balance flips and the flight is most of the bill, which is why flying to South America on points is priced chart by chart from five US gateways. Find the booking first, transfer last: treat a bank-to-program transfer as one-way unless the program says otherwise, so the confirmed points price and the confirmed cash-due line come before any points move. Do the Cancun math on the screen that shows the taxes, and only then decide whether a transfer is worth making.

A couple needs only two seats and one room, and pricing a honeymoon from two separate balances shows which balance should pay for which half; for a family of four, the seat count is a constraint: the search has to show four seats on the same flights. If you are looking at Southwest, points from bank transfers to Southwest explains what the airline prints about price and how transferred points behave, and the family of four playbook covers the four-seat search and the names-on-tickets side.

On the hotel side, the number of points per night is a separate calculation from the cash that survives. How many points you need for a hotel walks through the worksheet for one chain at a time, including the fee treatment this page summarised. Browse the destinations hub for the other trip-level guides in this series.

Before the transfer, take the cash-due total from the flight screen, add the VISITAX, add the resort fee or extra-person charge from the hotel screen, add any Mexican or US entry fee the flight screen leaves out, and divide what is left of the cash price by the points. The example below shows that on the flights alone.