‘Long-term goal is to have sustained level of Japanese visitors’

Gov. Arnold I. Palacios said his administration does not only want to just jumpstart the Japan tourism market, but to have a sustained level of regular visitors from the country to the Commonwealth.

In order to achieve that long-term investment, the CNMI would need to work on destination enhancement, said Palacios at a press conference in the governor’s conference room last Tuesday afternoon.

He recounted that during his and the Marianas Visitors Authority’s recent four-day trip to Japan, they assured Japan travel agencies and airlines that they are already starting the Garapan revitalization and the commitment to improving tourist sites and cleaning up of the islands.

The governor said they did ask point-blank what they believe needs to be done and that the response was that the CNMI needs to clean up Saipan.

“And that’s what we’ve all been saying,” he added.

Arnold Palacios and Gloria Cavanagh

Secondly, the CNMI needs to add more activities and amenities to the destination, Palacios said, quoting the feedback they got.

With respect to the China tourism market, Palacios said he believes it’s in the CNMI’s best interest to begin searching and reinvigorating different target markets, rather than just concentrating on the Chinese market.

“The reality on the ground is that we need to prepare ourselves,” he said.

Just looking at the world news every day makes the situation obvious, he added. “Rather than stick our head in the sand, we need to move away from that and look for other opportunities,” he said.

As for the Taiwan tourism market, Palacios said it’s not that big, but it’s an option that they need to look at closely and perhaps see what they need to do to nurture that market so they can get some tourists from Taiwan.

Gloria Cavanagh, who is the acting MVA board chair and was also present at the press conference, disclosed that the CNMI is limited by the number of plane seats that come in from Japan, since the flights are only thrice a week, for 166 seats per flight.

“So you’re only looking at a little over 2,000 seats that are actually available,” Cavanagh said.

She said they did have some good number of arrivals, about over 1,000 people, from Japan last December, January, and February.

Cavanagh said March was really small and that’s because they did not run their promotion at that time.

“We are hoping it will increase. We’re kind of hoping that, by the summer at least, we will have around 70% to 80% load factor,” she said.