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November visitor arrivals up 6 percent
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Posted on Dec 22 2000
Visitor arrivals for the month of November posted a six percent growth totaling 43,939 compared to the same period of the previous fiscal year, according to the Marianas Visitors Authority.
However, arrivals from Japan which is the biggest source of visitors of the CNMI, only registered a three percent growth which may be due to the decline in extra flights in November.
A total of six extra flights from Japan were made in November 1999, which brought in 1,256 passengers, but in November 2000, Japan Airlines had only three extra flights with a total of 659 passengers.
Taiwan has continuously shown improvement for the past seven months as arrivals jumped 453 percent in November 2000 primarily as a result of the direct flight services by Mandarin Airlines.
Arrivals from Korea jumped 23 percent which MVA said was partly brought about by the direct flight from Pusan, Korea which began in March 2000.
A report from MVA Korea revealed that outbound travel is affected due to the recent filing of bankruptcy by Daewoo Motor, the biggest car manufacturer in that country. With this effect on consumer spending, tour operators expect November and December to be slow months for outbound travel.
Tourism officials expect arrivals to improve greatly in January as JAL plans to dispatch nine additional flights out of three major cities in Japan to Saipan.
JAL will be deploying four extra flights from Nagoya, Osaka and Fukuoka to Saipan in addition to its daily flight services this month in anticipation of the increased demand during the holiday and winter season. (Lindablue F. Romero)
