How far is Playa del Carmen from Tulum? Here's the quick answer if you drive this relatively short distance without making any stops.
Nonstop drive: 46 miles or 74 km
Driving time: 1 hour, 14 minutes
Even though you can drive this distance straight through, it might be more interesting to stop along the way. You can scroll down to calculate how many hours it would take if you drive with stops.
Now let's assume you have a private jet and you can fly in the fastest possible straight line between Tulum, Mexico and Playa del Carmen, Mexico. Because of the curvature of the Earth, the shortest distance is actually the "great circle" distance, or "as the crow flies" which is calculated using an iterative Vincenty formula.
Flight distance: 42 miles or 68 km
Flight time: 35 minutes
The straight line flight distance is 4 miles less than driving on roads, which means the driving distance is roughly 1.1x of the flight distance.
Your plane flies much faster than a car, so the flight time is about 1/2th of the time it would take to drive.
This is a relatively short flight in a private plane, but you might be planning to book a commercial flight. In that case, your travel time would really need to include how many minutes to get to your local airport, wait for security, board and taxi on the runway, land at the other airport, and get to your destination. Scroll down to see a more realistic calculation that takes into account all these factors to get a more accurate estimate of your actual flight time.
Let's say you're actually planning a road trip to Playa del Carmen, and you want to stop on the way to explore. If it's a real road trip, you might want to check out interesting places along the way, or maybe eat at a great restaurant. That's what Trippy is perfect for, helping you figure out travel plans in detail.
Road trip: 1 day of driving
With the full itinerary planned out, we can estimate your total travel time for this trip.
Travel time: 1.5 hours on the road
Itinerary
Start in Tulum.
Drive for about 8 minutes, then stop at Edventure tour and stay for about 1 hour.
Next, drive for another 16 minutes then stop at Dos Ojos Cenotes and stay for 1 hour.
Drive for 15 minutes then stop at Yal Ku Lagoon and stay for 1 hour.
Drive for 14 minutes then stop in Riviera Maya and stay for 1 hour.
Drive for 22 minutes then stop at Xplor Park and stay for 1 hour.
Finally, drive for about 9 minutes and arrive in Playa del Carmen.
To see all the details on this itinerary, including recommended restaurants, hotels, and things to do along the way, check out the full road trip planner:
In the quick calculation above, we assumed you had a private plane and just wanted to know the time in the air from city to city. But for most of us, we're going to be flying on a commercial airline (whether it's first class or coach). So that means we really need to account for all the extra travel time getting to the airport, waiting for our flight, and making it to the destination.
To give you a better estimate of real-life travel, we've put together a flight itinerary with actual airports. Eventually you'll be able to customize this plan, choosing your own airports and flights. But for now, here's an example we've selected to give you an idea of how traveling might work between airports.
Departure airport: Cozumel International Airport (CZM)
Arrival airport: Cancún International Airport (CUN)
With the airports selected, we can estimate the travel time to and from the airport, based on how far the airport is from downtown.
Getting to the airport: 129 minutes
Getting to your destination: 92 minutes
Now finally, let's look at an example flight from CZM to CUN and figure out how long it would take to fly including take-off and landing, and time to taxi on the runway.
Commercial flight time: 35 minutes
So now we can finally get an idea of the total travel time from Tulum to Playa del Carmen including time spent getting to/from the airports, an estimated wait time of 2 hours at the airport for TSA security lines and waiting at the gate, and the actual flight itself.
Total travel time: 6 hours
To see the details on this flight plan, including recommended airports, airline, and route, check out the flight planner:
Trippy has a ton of information that can help you plan your trip to Playa del Carmen, Mexico. Start by reading the Trippy page on where to stay in Playa del Carmen. Trippy has an entire Q&A community where you can post questions and get answers from expert travelers or locals who know the area. For instance, you might be interested in the answers to this question: Advice on best kept secrets?. If you're looking for a place to stay, you might want to check out Viceroy Riviera Maya. A great place to eat might be Los Aguachiles. Trippy members can suggest things to do in Playa del Carmen like Akumal. Check out some of the questions people have asked about Playa del Carmen like Looking for beautiful family-friendly non all-inclusive resort in PDC.. Click the button below to explore Playa del Carmen in detail.
The distance is the same either way if you're flying a straight line (or driving the same roads back and forth). But for a real trip, there can be plenty of differences so go ahead and check the reverse directions to get the distance from Playa del Carmen to Tulum, or go to the main page to calculate the distance between cities.
If you happen to know Tulum, don't forget to help other travelers and answer some questions about Tulum!
More info on this route:
drive from Tulum to Playa del Carmen
road conditions
alternate routes
Google driving directions