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Arrivals to Tinian, Rota soar
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Posted on Mar 19 2001
While visitor arrivals to the island of Saipan fell by six percent in February, tourists traveling to Rota and Tinian registered a sharp 69 percent and 276 percent increase respectively during the same month.
Arrivals to Rota climbed from 674 in February last year to 1,139 last month. The largest growth came from the CNMI’s strongest markets — Japan and Korea.
Japanese tourist arrivals to Rota grew 93 percent year-on-year from 327 to 631. While visitors coming from Korea rose a hundred fold. US residents traveling to Rota also registered an impressive figure with a 48 percent increase from 320 last year to 472 in February 2001.
On the other hand, visitor arrivals to Tinian exploded from a mere 129 in February a year ago to 560 last month. The biggest percentage increase came from the Japanese market with a dizzying 880 percent turnaround from just 15 in February 2000 to 147 in February 2001.
The Korean and US markets also showed growth with 438 percent and 158 percent increase in tourist arrivals respectively.
For its part, the Saipan market mirrored the mood of the CNMI tourist arrival market with a 6 percent decrease in February 2001. Tourist arrivals to the CNMI was down nearly 4 percent last month.
There were a total of 42,479 tourist arrivals to Saipan in February 2001 compared to 45,174 in the same period last year. Japanese tourists accounted for just a two percent drop from 34,793 in 2000 to 34,209 in February this year.
The Korean market registered a 13 percent fall in tourist arrivals from 4,759 in February 2000 to 4,160 in February 2001.
Country wise, the largest dip in visitor arrivals to Saipan was recorded by the US with a 63 percent drop from 1,568 in February 2000 to just 599 this year.
There were 327 tourists who traveled to Saipan choosing seacraft as the mode of transportation. The figure, however, is a six percent drop from the 989 tourists who went to Saipan by sea in February last year.
