Korean arrivals in positive territory

With the slight improvement of visitor arrivals last month, the Marianas Visitors Authority is hopeful that this will signal the much awaited recovery of the island’s tourism economy.

Based on the latest statistics, visitor arrivals registered only a 10 percent decline totalling 43,706 in January compared to the same period last year. Likewise, Japan, the island’s main market, posted a 10 percent drop.

Since late last year, Japan Airlines has been carrying out its own promotional campaign to increase visitor arrivals in the Northern Marianas. JAL has pledged to help market the CNMI in Japan as arrivals continue to drop since the Asian financial crisis begun more than a year ago.

However, the Korean market showed great improvement as arrivals record jumped 122 percent with the recovery in value of the Korean won against the US dollar.

According to Japan Travel Bureau, the biggest travel company, there is still a very strong desire from the Japanese to go on holiday trips this year despite the ongoing recession in Japan.

With the placement of national holidays to create three-day weekends and the Ministry of Transport’s efforts to encourage extended stay are expected to increase demand for travel, particularly for domestic travel and short trips to nearby overseas destinations such as Southeast Asia, Guam and the CNMI.

Family groups and those in middle life will continue to dominate the outbound market. The number of traveling single women in their 20s and 30s has sharply dropped in 1998 although their desire to travel remains strong, JTB said.

Many travel agents in Japan were disappointed because there were not enough airline seats to accommodate the expected huge number of Japanese tourists arrivals who were supposed to spend the New Year’s holidays and Coming of Age Day (national holiday) to the CNMI last month.

Due to the downtrend in visitor arrivals as a result of Asia’s financial crisis, Continental Airlines has reduced its flights to avert further losses.

CNMI’s alternative markets — Hong Kong and Taiwan failed to register considerable improvement. Arrivals from Hong Kong dropped 22 percent while Taiwan posted a 23 percent increase.

The Russian market remains down with a 52 percent plunge in arrivals and also China with a 30 percent decline which can be partly attributed to the strict measures imposed by the Department of Labor and Immigration to tourists coming from these two countries.