Those pesky package tourists

JAL’s departure from Saipan hit the aviation rumor mill two weeks ago. It’s really a tip of the iceberg gig. In public, the Japanese are famously (or infamously) circumspect about things, and JAL has been very polite in crafting its rationale for the move. I can’t speak for JAL, of course, but the word in aviation and tourism circles is that Saipan is so hard to deal with that a lot of executives are just plain fed up with the whole mess. Nobody would dare air those facts publicly, of course, but if I printed the things being said in candor, there would be all sorts of turmoil.

Meanwhile, headwinds for the garment sector are one more nail in the airline coffin. The garment industry was essentially subsidizing the passenger routes, since Saipan’s airliners typically carry a lot of garments as outbound cargo. Go behind Pizza Hut, for example, and you’ll see a bunch of airline cargo containers used to ship wares from the adjacent factory; those containers are for passenger planes.

Which means that you can’t be “anti-garment” and “pro-tourism” at the same time. Economies always have virtuous links between industries. After all, that’s what an “economy” is, an invisible series of symbiotic links.

Nobody who I know expects JAL to change its pullout plans, and the depth of Saipan’s economic problems is demonstrated by the complete cluelessness with which JAL’s news was received.

Some officials on Saipan have long ridiculed the Japanese for being “package tourists,” and the government-funded econocrats joined the call, wanting to transform Japanese visitors into U.S. style “Free, Independent Travelers.” The more and more Saipan blabbered on this point, the dumber it looked. Well, Saipan is getting what it asked for. Don’t want package tourists? OK, you’re getting your wish. I guess you’ll replace all that with backpackers from Sydney and oil workers from Russia.

Right.

You can only conclude that JAL knew a losing market when it saw one. I don’t buy any wacky conspiracy theories about why they pulled out, and I don’t care what their CEO had for breakfast, either. Saipan, not JAL, is the issue here, because market viability is the issue.

I don’t know how important momentum is in this whole gig, but if Japan’s tour agents stop selling Saipan as a destination, you might want to put off building any hotels in your backyard in your spare time. Once we’re yanked from those colorful little tour catalogs (or whatever they call them, the name escapes me because of Freudian repression), we don’t exist.

Meanwhile, one of Saipan’s major tour operators stated that a JAL pullout would result in cutting half of the operator’s Saipan staff. Hmm…maybe those package tourists weren’t so bad after all…and I darned sure don’t see many Free, Independent Travelers here, do you?

The Japanese tourism industry is one of the most advanced, evolved, and successful in the world. If we can’t learn from them, who can we learn from? If Saipan succeeds in alienating these guys, there will be nobody else who can fill that void.

* * *

Despite the business exodus, one intrepid soul has actually started one (a business, not an exodus) in As Lito. And thus I introduce Islanddogz Bar (telephone 235-9778), which is across the street from Juanny’s Hair Salon. You may notice their ads in the Saipan Tribune, so after troubling your head over the lousy economy, you south-siders at least have a place to repose with a cold one. This is the only good news in Saipan for the entire week, so we might as well note it.