| Politics: TROPICAL PARADISE STRUGGLES TO BE FOUND |
Govt blamed for inability to find funding
Criselda B Hernandez
The United States territory of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) has all the elements of a tropical paradise that foreign travellers and vacationers would enjoy—magnificent shores of beautiful beaches and crystal clear blue waters, historical and cultural attractions, world-class golf courses, luxury hotels, shopping centres, marine and other recreational activities and the overall spectacular scenery.
| Blooming... Flame tree in Saipan. |
But the daunting challenge for the territory is the promotion and marketing of this tropical paradise to attract visitors from foreign countries.
A bigger problem is the government’s inability to prioritise funding to various tourism promotions and marketing efforts. These are further complicated by the high cost of tourism-related services in the CNMI, including air fares, hotel accommodation rates, prices of food in restaurants, and even taxi fares.
Even if 30 years had passed since the birth of the local tourism industry, the CNMI has yet to differentiate itself from other tropical destinations like its neighbour Guam, Palau, or Hawaii. The Marianas Visitors Authority (MVA), the lead tourism agency in the CNMI, uses various names to market the islands.
Name recall is thus hard to come by. “Who are we? Are we the Northern Marianas? Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands? We need a brand,” said MVA board of directors vice-chair, Marian Aldan-Pierce, during a May general membership meeting of the MVA.
There were also times when the MVA would only use Saipan—the main island of the CNMI—to market the whole place.
CNMI is a about three degrees “more east” than neighbouring US territory of Guam. But Guam continues to rake in the benefits of marketing itself as the place “Where America’s Day Begins.”
CNMI also lost the opportunity in the production of the Hollywood movie, “Windtalkers,” which was about Navajo code-talkers brought to the islands of Saipan and Tinian during World War II and whose use of the Navajo language—unrecognisable to Japanese—played a major role in the victory of the United States against the Japanese forces. The movie was shot in Hawaii.
CNMI also failed to convince the producers of the “Survivors” series to shoot on the islands, just like Palau.
Despite being a United States commonwealth, the CNMI is unknown to majority of Americans in the mainland.
CNMI is composed of 14 tropical islands across 400 miles in the western Pacific Ocean, adjacent to the famous Marianas Trench, the world’s deepest trench at 35,810 feet below water.
The volcanic islands lie approximately 1300 miles south of Tokyo, Japan; 3200 miles west of Honolulu, Hawaii; and 2900 miles north of Sydney, Australia.
Saipan, the major island, is the seat of CNMI’s government, business and economy, followed by Tinian and Rota.
Its official currency is the US dollar, and its local residents are US citizens. English and Chamorro are the official languages.
In May, CNMI Governor Benigno R Fitial presented his five-year strategic initiatives to guide the tourism industry in achieving the goal of bringing in 1 million tourists a year starting 2010. But his administration has yet to provide sufficient funds to the Marianas Visitors Authority to promote and market the islands as a vacation destination.
“One million? Governor, are you kidding?,” said MVA board chair, Jerry Tan, when the governor announced the goal of bringing in 1 million tourists a year. “We have a lot of work to do. It’s not easy.”
In 2005, CNMI’s tourist arrivals reached only 506,846. At its peak, just before the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, CNMI welcomed 736,117 tourists.
The lack of sufficient government funding is a major factor in CNMI’s ability to aggressively market itself as a prime tourism destination.
Past administrations knew this, but year after year, MVA’s budget continues to dwindle to a point where it had to close or downsize its satellite offices, even in its major markets such as Japan and Korea.
MVA’s budget to promote CNMI in Japan cannot match those of Guam’s and Hawaii.
MVA’s fiscal year 2006 appropriation from the CNMI government is only US$7 million.
However, MVA’s net budget ends up only at US$5.9 million due to other constitutionally mandated deductions for deficit payment.
Neighbouring Guam’s tourism agency, the Guam Visitors Bureau, has a 2006 budget of over US$14.3 million—more than double MVA’s funding.
From only US$7 million in 2006, MVA is asking for an US$11.3 million budget for the next fiscal year.
The US$4 million increase, according to MVA, would be used mainly for advertising and the promotion overseas of CNMI.
MVA said it could not sacrifice its advertising and marketing funds if it is to meet its goal of attracting more tourists to the islands.
But then again, the cash-strapped government is not keen to grant the request for more funds, especially if it is planning to reduce the government workforce of 5000 because of dwindling resources, coupled with rising fuel costs and business closures.
Tourism is one of two major industries in the CNMI—the other is garment manufacturing which is also in a crisis due to worldwide trade liberalisation that forced garment factories to shut down their operations in CNMI and transfer to other Asian countries paying much lower wages.
With a total population of 75,066, CNMI’s per capita gross domestic product was an estimated US$13,350, a figure 50.9 percent of the lowest state per capita GDP, and 33.7 percent of the US national per capita GDP.
CNMI’s tourism industry was just about to recover from the Asian economic crisis of the mid-90s, the effects of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and SARS when it received yet another major blow when Japan Airlines (JAL) pulled out of the CNMI in October 2005.
A study released by the US-based consulting firm Economist.com projected that JAL’s pullout could cause CNMI to lose as much as US$216.2 million in economic output annually, if none of JAL’s airlift capacity is picked up by other airlines.
True enough, CNMI’s tourist arrival rate has been declining every month since the Japan Airlines pullout.
In April, for example, arrivals totalled only 32,981—a 17 percent drop from April 2005’s 39,748 visitors.
MVA said by the time the fiscal year 2006 is over on September 30, arrivals from Japan alone will drop by 33 percent due mainly to Japan Airlines’ pullout which resulted in reduction in airline seats by a third.
Japan accounts for 64 percent of travellers visiting CNMI and Korea, 17 percent. China, which CNMI views as a potential major market, accounts for 10 percent of the overall arrivals.
Japan Airlines cited low seat yields and hence, the difficulty in making a profit from the Japan-Saipan route as the main reason for its withdrawal. The low seat yield is attributed to many Japanese travellers’ lack of knowledge about CNMI.
Again, this is mainly due to lack of promotion and marketing of the CNMI because of lack of budget. In 1996, a tourist spent an average of US$789 during his or her stay in CNMI.
This year, the level is down to US$650, according to a recent study by the Bank of Hawaii. All is not lost, however. CNMI tourism market has made some progress since the Japan Airlines’ pullout. For example, Northwest Airlines, which has had a daily flight between Tokyo and Saipan, increased that frequency to 10 flights per week in April.
But tourism stakeholders admit it will take tremendous effort from the government and the private sector to sustain CNMI’s tourism industry.
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