Grand Mariana will ease Saipan’s lack of hotel rooms

This artist’s rendition shows Best Sunshine’s $550-million Grand Mariana Casino & Hotel Resort project at the Samoan Housing area in Garapan. (Contributed Photo)

Phase 1 of its development will result in 373 additional rooms. This is the Grand Mariana Casino Hotel and Resort, the $550-million mammoth structure that is expected to open in December 2016. The launch of the hotel will take place in the first quarter of 2017.

In its “2015 Annual Results” released last month, Imperial Pacific International Holdings Limited, the investment holding company of Best Sunshine International, said that over the next 12 to 18 months the hotel landscape in the CNMI will change.

This is with the expected opening of two more new luxury hotels. With Grand Mariana Casino Hotel and Resort, the supply of luxury hotel rooms on Saipan will now increase by 1,015 rooms.

Another Hong Kong-based investor, Honest Profit International Ltd., is expected to open its $130-million, 300-room hotel in San Antonio since its groundbreaking two years ago.

Kensington Hotel, the former Hotel Nikko facility, is expected to officially open on June 1.

Altogether, the three hotel openings will increase Saipan’s current hotel room capacity by 38 percent.

Grand Mariana Casino Hotel and Resort represents 36 percent of the total additional hotel rooms expected to open up soon on Saipan.

Records from the Hotel Association of the Mariana Islands showed that there are currently only 20 rated hotels on the island of Saipan. This is with a total combined room of 2,666.

The supply of luxury hotel rooms is also very limited, with five-star hotel rooms only accounting for an estimated 10 percent of the total supply, records show.

With the opening of Grand Mariana Casino and Resort, Best Sunshine International is also developing first class hospitality services on Saipan.

The Hong Kong-based investor is now on track for Phase 1 of its $7.1-billion integrated resort investment on Saipan, the largest private sector investment in this side of the world.

The Commonwealth Casino Commission in January of this year has reaffirmed Imperial Pacific’s financial position when it said that its Saipan flagship company is financially capable to complete the construction of its Grand Mariana Casino Hotel and Resort.

Grand Mariana will feature a four-story casino building in an elegant Beaux-Arts architectural style of the famed Casino de Monte Carlo.

It will also be an imposing 16-story hotel tower with 373 hotel suites.