Japan remains the most challenging market for the Marianas Visitors Authority, following a major setback last year brought about by the departure of Japan Airlines.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur toughest challenge remains with Japan. But failure is not an option. We will overcome this setback,\u201d said MVA board chair Jerry Tan in a recently held MVA general membership meeting on Saipan.<\/p>\n
He said the CNMI continues its discussion with airlines to service the Japan-Saipan route.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to grow the Japan market. There are ongoing discussions. We want the Osaka flights back soon,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Saipan lost its Osaka flights from Northwest Airlines last month when the airline opted to use that route to serve Guam.<\/p>\n
Northwest, the lone airline that services the Japan market for the CNMI, currently flies the Narita-Saipan and Nagoya-Saipan routes.<\/p>\n
These reduced flights prompted the MVA to lower its projected arrivals from Japan in fiscal year 2007.<\/p>\n
Instead of 312,000 target arrivals, the MVA reduced this to 250,000 in FY 2007.<\/p>\n
In fiscal year 2006, covering October 2005 to September 2006, the CNMI received 280,292 visitors from Japan, which is a 25-percent decline compared to the previous fiscal year. <\/p>\n
In October 2006, Japan arrivals registered a 6-percent decline. From 22,591 in October 2005, the arrivals went down to 21,330 last month.<\/p>\n
The huge decline was attributed to the loss of air seats due to the JAL pullout. Japan Airlines used to bring in an average of 150,000 tourists a year. <\/p>\n
In October this year, arrivals from Japan declined by 6 percent.<\/p>\n
Japan arrivals represent about 60 percent of the total tourist arrivals in the CNMI.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Japan remains the most challenging market for the Marianas Visitors Authority, following a major setback last year brought about by the departure of Japan Airlines.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-106986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106986\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}