The Marianas Visitors Authority is keeping its fingers crossed that Cape Air would continue its service in the CNMI, as it has been promoting the island of Rota as an ecotourism destination the past few years.<\/p>\n
MVA managing director Chris Concepcion described as \u201cgreat news\u201d Gov. Ralph DLG Torres\u2019 meeting with Cape Air officials early this month. <\/p>\n
Cape Air will be ending years of partnership with United Airlines on May 31, with the latter choosing to reduce its daily flights to Saipan from more than four each day to just once a day.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, the governor and [Commonwealth Ports Authority] officials met with Cape Air officials to discuss the possibility of extending Cape Air\u2019s service to Rota,\u201d Concepcion told Saipan Tribune. \u201cThe MVA has offered our support as we\u2019ve invested significantly in the promotion of Rota as a tourist destination the past few years and would hate to see that go to waste.\u201d <\/p>\n
The MVA continues to promote the CNMI in China and Korea, and is also marketing the Commonwealth in Russia and Taiwan, while aggressively trying to revive the Japanese market.<\/p>\n
Concepcion said they are encouraging the Rota Mayor\u2019s Office to tap the funds that MVA gives Rota monthly to promote the destination. \u201cThe Rota mayor [should] consider using the 2 percent monthly funding [MVA] provides to the municipality.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201c[These are] from our hotel occupancy tax allotment for flight incentives, which is what the funding was originally intended for,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
The government has allotted a total of $7,815,639 for Rota in the 2018 fiscal year budget, a part of which came from the hotel occupancy tax and from the alcohol container tax. The Rota Mayor\u2019s Office got $2,878,904 of that amount.<\/p>\n
Other flight concerns<\/strong><\/p>\n Concepcion said United\u2019s plan to cut its daily service would harm the CNMI\u2019s tourism industry. \u201cWe are concerned about United\u2019s plans to fly one daily between Saipan and Guam.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis will harm our connecting passengers from the U.S., Japan, and elsewhere who may be forced to overnight in Guam or have an uncomfortably long layover,\u201d said Concepcion.<\/p>\n United\u2019s plan to cut its daily flights also pose a problem to the CNMI\u2019s off-island referral patients that either go to Guam, the Philippines, or Hawaii for treatment and avail of medical care that\u2019s not available on Saipan.<\/p>\n Concepcion added that, although it is a separate matter for now, the MVA is in talks with United on a possible direct charter flights from Japan to Saipan.<\/p>\n Delta Air Lines has ceased its operations on Saipan, while Jin Air has temporarily suspended its flights due to rising fuel costs and hotel rates.<\/p>\n China Eastern Airlines is trying to increase its daily flights, but Concepcion said that the Commonwealth Ports Authority, under executive director Chris Tenorio, is the concerned agency when it comes to the said issue.<\/p>\n \u201cI will defer to the CPA on this since they have the jurisdiction over who gets approved to fly to the CNMI. The MVA will work with all airlines that provide direct service to the CNMI by promoting that route to the markets which they serve,\u201d Concepcion added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Marianas Visitors Authority is keeping its fingers crossed that Cape Air would continue its…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[979,26,51,212],"class_list":["post-276891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-cape-air","tag-cnmi","tag-guam","tag-mva"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276891","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\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276891\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}