Saipan airport, CNMI Photo: Free google search image
The Chamber official emphasised the 12 daily flights is the barebones minimum just to keep not only the CNMI tourism industry's head above water,
Officials in the Northern Mariana Islands are crying out for more international flights to land in the nation, to help keep its struggling tourism industry and the economy afloat.
Saipan Chamber of Commerce director Ron Smith said a minimum of 12 international flights need to be arriving daily.
The Chamber official emphasised the 12 daily flights is the barebones minimum just to keep not only the CNMI tourism industry's head above water, but the Commonwealth economy in general, which is pretty much dependent on visitor arrivals.
"These direct flights will allow us to recover a little bit and you can see some of the other statistics in regard to Chinese visitors and how important they are.
"For 40 percent down to 3 percent that is accounting for a large percentage of the current drop that we've seen, so regardless of where it's from, we don't really have a preference, but we need a third market and it's got to be a robust one.
"It's got to provide us with bringing 200,000-300,000 visitors per year," he said.
Visitor numbers are down by 54 percent when compared with 2017.
RNZ Pacific's Northern Marianas correspondent Mark Rabago said the pandemic is partly to blame for the drop in tourists.
"We were essentially shut for the majority of the year no tourists, and then because China also shut down our number of tourists went away...until now we basically do not have any flights from China.
"And what Chinese tourists we have are travellers that go via Japan or Korea to come here." he said
Rabago said it is critical more flights start coming here.
"It's very important as it's the only industry that we have, if there is no tourists coming into the CNMI there will be no business and it will be a ghost town in a few years." he said.
Businesses are already feeling the impacts, with Hyatt Regency Saipan shutting on June 30 after more than 30 years, due to low visitor numbers.
Meanwhile, the country's Hotel Association NMI (HANMI) board vice chairperson Ivan Quichocho told the Saipan Tribune it is an urgent situation for the sector.
He said there's only one way to improve the hotel occupancy-through more flights and more tourists
"We just talked about what's not coming. And we just talked about the effort to try and get us to the base number of flights that we had last year without the additional Guam diversions and that's already a struggle"
Quichocho said the average room rate for April was dropping by $10 compared with April 2023, and HANMI members are making less money with low average room occupancy at 35 percent.