{"id":306265,"date":"2019-08-19T06:06:09","date_gmt":"2019-08-18T20:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=306265"},"modified":"2019-08-19T06:06:09","modified_gmt":"2019-08-18T20:06:09","slug":"plight-of-260-hyatt-employees-depends-on-lease-renewal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/plight-of-260-hyatt-employees-depends-on-lease-renewal\/","title":{"rendered":"Plight of 260 Hyatt employees depends on lease renewal"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Kobe Portopia\u00a0Hotel Corp. president and owner Hitoshi Nakauchi was on Saipan last week to continue negotiations with the Department of Public Lands about the renewal of Hyatt Regency Saipan\u2019s lease.(DONNA RIVERA)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Hyatt Regency Saipan, still the only international brand hotel in the Northern Marianas after almost 38 years, has a public land lease that\u2019s expiring in December 2021. Yet with only a little over two years to go, its lease renewal remains up in the air.<\/p>\n

For Kobe Portopia\u00a0Hotel Corp. president and owner Hitoshi Nakauchi, whose company owns Hyatt Regency Saipan, one of his biggest concerns is the future of Hyatt\u2019s over 260 employees, who are local residents.<\/p>\n

Nakauchi, who was on Saipan last week to meet with the Department of Public Lands and start the ball rolling on the lease renewal, pointed out that more than 80% of Hyatt employees are CNMI residents.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen my company started operations, 60% of our staff were Filipinos. Now, we have evolved and have more than 80% local people are working at the Hyatt,\u201d he said. \u201cThey are my concern and having a majority of local residents in our workforce has made a big contribution to the economy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hyatt Regency Saipan general manager Nick Nishikawa echoed this concern. \u201cTwo-hundred sixty employees will be affected by the result of the lease renewal agreement and, including their families, it would go up to 1,000 people,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The lease of public lands in the CNMI is governed by law. Last December, the CNMI government enacted a law that authorizes certain existing public land lease terms to be extended up to 55 years and authorizes DPL to negotiate new public leases with certain existing public land lessees under new terms and considerations without publishing an RFP.<\/p>\n

In his visit last week, Nakauchi called on DPL Secretary Marianne Teregeyo. \u201cWe talked about the land lease extension, whether it is possible or not or what kind of conditions should be met \u2026.DPL will come back to us with their set of conditions for the renewal.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the side of Hyatt, Nakauchi said they don\u2019t have specific numbers and conditions just yet. \u201c[DPL] will come back to us and we will work on the conditions,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The original lease for the Hyatt property was inked 30 years ago, so Nakauchi expects the fees to go up.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut as far as how much it [would go up] and how much we can bear, that we have not discussed yet,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

According to Nakauchi, prior to his meeting with Teregeyo last week, DPL came up with a set of new lease conditions that were first shown to the Hotel Association of the Northern Mariana Islands and the Saipan Chamber of Commerce for review as the Hyatt is a member of both organizations. <\/p>\n

He said the new conditions were found to be \u201cdifficult\u201d and \u201cprohibitive for us to continue.\u201d HANMI reportedly complained that the new lease conditions were too \u201chigh\u201d for a hotel to continue business operations.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe gave it back to DPL and is currently under negotiations. \u2026We hope to hear from them within this year or early next year. Otherwise, we don\u2019t have time to prepare. Japan\u2019s fiscal year ends in March and so, if our lease expires in December 2021, that will leave us one year and nine months to prepare and that is not enough,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

DPL is also asking Hyatt for a list of how it plans to improve the property, the community, and the economy, Nakauchi said. He assured that Hyatt has such plans. <\/p>\n

\u201cFirst off, [we plan] to acquire basic equipment and replacements such as chiller equipment, reverse osmosis (filter systems), which makes distilled water from seawater and those kinds of thing cost a huge amount,\u201d he said. \u201cWe plan to upgrade the guest rooms to be more modern, comfortable, functional design-wise, and suitable for this resort island. We also need to update the design of the restaurants,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Hyatt has indeed been doing many minor improvements over the years, he said, but if the lease is renewed, they are eager to do more.<\/p>\n

Hyatt has also made an impact on the CNMI, according to Nishikawa. One of the recent Hyatt community outreach was the annual Hyatt Charity Golf Classic that was held last July, where they raised a total of $68,000 for five beneficiaries involved in education, preserving culture, sports, and job placements.<\/p>\n

Hyatt also did not close its eyes to the community after Super Typhoon Yutu. \u201cMany residents took refuge at the Hyatt Regency Saipan before and after the typhoon. \u2026People came to the hotel looking for power outlets to charge their phones, cook their food and we\u2026let them do it. After Yutu, we were prepared for our guests and the community,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Groups like the Northern Marianas Descent Corp. have been vocal about their desire to renegotiate the leases on public lands.<\/p>\n

In an earlier interview, NMDC president John Gonzales said that NMDs were not in favor of the law that allowed lease extensions, saying NMDs do not benefit from the current land lease agreements.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe over-arching position was that to keep the 40 years [lease] because, if they\u2019re all expiring, let\u2019s sit down again and negotiate the next 40 years. \u2026We believe the current arrangement of 40 years under-represents us\u2026and under-benefits us because the money doesn\u2019t directly benefit us,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Nakauchi said he understands people\u2019s feelings about public lands. \u201cIt\u2019s their land so they want to make a good use of it. We should not get all the benefit from this land, we have to be able to share the benefit of the land. In that context, DPL and Hyatt can find a mutually aggregable position so that we can proceed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026My father, Tsutomu Nakauchi, started this business 28 years ago, after acquiring it from EIE Co. (which had been operating Hyatt for 10 years prior to acquisition). \u2026With those many years invested, we are ready to cooperate,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Nishikawa believes that Hyatt\u2019s greatest impact in the CNMI is making the Marianas known worldwide, since they have 800-plus hotels all over the world and every hotel is an agent. \u201cEach hotel has its own customers and if these customers want to travel to the Pacific, they usually recommend the Hyatt Regency Saipan. \u2026Everything at Hyatt is connected like a chain.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople all over the world trust the Hyatt brand\u2026 For the CNMI, where tourism is the only industry on the island, those connections are very important,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hyatt Regency Saipan, still the only international brand hotel in the Northern Marianas after almost…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":306268,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-306265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306265","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\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306265\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/306268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}