The Torres administration is in talks with a couple of airlines in connection with the Marianas Visitors Authority\u2019s effort to create the so-called \u201ctravel bubble\u201d as a means to slowly revive the CNMI\u2019s tourism industry since the shutdown of the CNMI\u2019s borders due to COVID-19 pandemic early this year.<\/p>\n
Speaking at his regular radio news briefing last Friday, Gov. Ralph DLG Torres disclosed that they are targeting tourists from South Korea for the \u201ctravel bubble,\u201d which refers to an exclusive tourism partnership between neighboring or nearby countries, preferably with one that has low COVID-19 infection rates.<\/p>\n
He said they are in serious talks with Jeju Airlines and Asiana Airlines, while some other airlines have been inquiring about the landing fees and other items. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re providing more information, but they do know and acknowledge that we are one of the safest places within the region to travel and we want to keep it that way,\u201d the governor said. <\/p>\n
Torres said they\u2019re trying to come up with a package and propose that package to Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. chief executive officer Esther Mu\u00f1a and COVID-19 Task Force chair Warren Villagomez\u2014one that will ensure to keep and sustain the CNMI\u2019s reputation as a safe destination.<\/p>\n
Torres hopes to bring in all industry stakeholders to the table within the next couple of weeks on how the CNMI will approach and bring in its first tourists. \u201cRight now, it seems like South Korea is our target. And we\u2019ll be meeting with more private businesses to get a hand into this travel bubble,\u201d Torres said.<\/p>\n
The governor said he wants to make sure that, primarily, the community will continue to be safe, and secondly, the workers, employees, and businesses are also safeguarded when they do open for tourists to start coming in. <\/p>\n
\u201cBut now it\u2019s a different level as well, because when they return to Korea or other areas, there\u2019s also a quarantine time of 14 days. So that\u2019s a hurdle that we\u2019re also trying to overcome,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Ever since the CNMI closed its borders to international tourism in mid-March, Torres said they have been trying to work out a way to reopen the CNMI safely. That included extending the dates of the planned reopening. Initially, the target was to reopen the CNMI to tourists last July 15.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is something that we want the community to understand and embrace, that we are trying to open up our borders,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Torres said the most important factor is that the process that they will eventually adopt has to work well. \u201cIt has to be working very well. If we are going to open up to tourists, it\u2019s going to be a separate system where it doesn\u2019t interrupt the current system. So we\u2019re going to be planning on how do we open up our markets. How do we open up our tourists and make sure that who\u2019s coming in are also safe, and leaving safe?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The governor said they\u2019ve been working on it for the last few months. \u201cWe continue to work on that because, at the end of the day, we do need our tourists back here to start opening up our economy.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Torres administration is in talks with a couple of airlines in connection with the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":331382,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[122],"class_list":["post-331344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331344","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\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=331344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331344\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/331382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}