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Tourism up on Saipan, Rota; down on Tinian
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Posted on Jul 14 2008
Newly released tourism data show visitor arrival rates have raised slightly on Saipan and Rota, but dropped on Tinian for the fifth month since October 2007.
The tourism industry has suffered on all of the Commonwealth’s islands recently despite some modest gains that local officials contend are the early signs of a recovery.
Last October, for example, the visitor arrival rate on Saipan dropped 20 percent compared to the same month in the previous year, according to Marianas Visitors Authority statistics issued this week. The same held true on Rota, which saw a 22-percent tourism drop that month.
Recent MVA marketing campaigns and promotions, however, have begun to yield some limited benefits among key Asian tourism markets like Japan, Korea and Russia.
Yet the slight increases in June appear confined to Saipan and Rota. On Saipan, arrivals jumped 3 percent last month compared to the June of the previous year. On Rota, tourism rates held steady, with only one more tourist, for a total of 953, visiting the island over last year’s figure of 952. In contrast, tourist visits to Tinian dropped by six tourists in June, at 3,173 total compared to 3,179, and by 17 percent in the previous month.
Korean tourism is up 31 percent over fiscal year 2007, MVA says. The Japanese market has begun to show signs of improvement, with single digit jumps in arrivals each month since April after several months of significant declines. Russian tourism has seen a dramatic upswing, increasing 158 percent in June compared to last year, yet the number of tourist arrivals is still low compared to other markets, with a mere 4,431 arrivals for the year so far.
