April hotel occupancy goes up

The hotel industry’s average occupancy rate went up by about 30 percent in April compared with year-ago figures.

The Hotel Association of the Northern Mariana Islands posted an average occupancy rate of 64.81 percent in April this year, higher than April 2003’s 51.84 percent.

HANMI chairman Ronald D. Sablan said that, with close to 40,000 inbound tourists visiting the islands last month, visitor arrivals improved by roughly 25 to 30 percent.

Occupancy rate improved even if the average room rate for the month slightly increased to $79.24 compared with April 2003’s $73.64.

Composed of 15 member hotels for a total room number of 2,588, HANMI attributed the growth in occupancy to a recovering tourism industry, which was plagued by global events that impacted worldwide travel last year.

“We’d like to see the numbers even better than that,” Sablan said.

Occupancy rate in March reached 69.96 percent, improving on last year’s 63.69 percent. The average room rate in March slightly dropped to $79.33 compared with March 2003’s $82.43.

The hotel sector first showed signs of recovery this year when room occupancy soared to 82.03 percent in February, even when the average room rate was $80.67.

The figure surpassed the already high occupancy of 79.28 percent in February 2003, when the CNMI benefited from visitors who diverted from Guam due to severe destruction caused by supertyphoon Pongsona on the federal territory in Dec. 2002. The average room rate in February 2003 reached $87.76.