Torres to reach out to Skymark

Saying Japan remains the CNMI’s priority tourist market, Gov. Ralph DLG Torres disclosed Friday that he is going to reach out this week to Skymark Airlines Inc. in a bid to convince it to resume flying to the CNMI

Speaking at a radio briefing last week, Torres said that many travel partners worked hard with the Marianas Visitors Authority to bring Skymark Airlines and bring back the Japanese market to the CNMI in the first place and that Skymark has been doing very until the COVID-10 pandemic.

“Eventually, they [Japanese] are our priority tourist market,” said Torres, adding that they want to continue that partnership with Skymark.

The governor said he has not reached out yet to Skymark directly, but that he would like to just have conversation with the airlines sometime this week.

Torres said that even Japan is having a hard time because of the pandemic and, like South Korea, also requires a 14-day quarantine when residents return home.

“Japan also has the 14-day quarantine when a resident returns to Japan. Those are the challenges that we have,” he said. “So even if we are safe here, even if we do open and we welcome a travel bubble, there are other factors that each country needs to address, and to allow their tourists or their citizens to leave the country and what to expect when they return home,” he said.

Torres said that, as far as they know, Skymark has suspended all its flights because of COVID-19.

“But we continue to monitor also the tourists domestically within Japan, and what opportunities we have to open those flights back to Saipan,” he said.

Torres said he is hoping that the whole CNMI can benefit from the entry of tourists, whether it’s from Japan or Korea.

He pointed out that, in early ’90s, there were Japanese tourists who would return to the CNMI several times, even as many as 10 times. “So those are the markets that we want to [tap] because those are tourists that travel every year, every other year. And we want to have the CNMI as a world-class destination for all our tourists,” he added.

Starting last March 26, Skymark suspended their Narita-Saipan flights in response to decreased travel demand due to the global coronavirus outbreak and the enforcement of quarantine measures by the CNMI and Japan governments.

Early last week, Torres announced that he anticipates the partial resumption of tourism from South Korea to the CNMI under the bubble travel program that will start next month, January.

He said the CNMI continues to work on reopening the tourism industry through a travel bubble agreement with source markets such as South Korea and Japan. He said the CNMI, however, has to remain cautious to ensure that any resumption of flights puts the health and safety of people first.