Hotel occupancy rate in September increased to an average of 79.33 percent, the highest for the month in the last eight years.<\/p>\n
Local hotels have maintained consecutive growth in occupancy rate since February this year, compared with their counterpart months last year. The average room rate last month also increased\u2014albeit slight\u2014at $78.05, higher than September 2003\u2019s average room rate of $75.<\/p>\n
Byung Kyu Park, the Hotel Association of the Northern Marianas Islands\u2019 acting chair, described the slight increase in room rate as \u201ca good sign\u201d for the CNMI\u2019s hotel industry.<\/p>\n
Despite the growth in hotel occupancy rate, however, Park conservatively stated that it would be \u201ctoo early to say\u201d if the CNMI\u2019s tourism economy has recovered.<\/p>\n
He noted, though, the increase in the number of Japanese and Chinese tourists staying in local hotels.<\/p>\n
September\u2019s occupancy rate went up from September 2003\u2019s 71.64 percent. HANMI statistics showed that the lowest occupancy rate for the month was in 2001\u2014when international travel suffered from the 9\/11 terrorist attacks\u2014posting only 47.88 percent.<\/p>\n
The September 2004 figure improved compared with the figures recorded for the same month beginning 1997, when occupancy rate was about 77.92 percent. Hotel occupancy went through a roller-coaster change since then, recording 52.78 percent in 1998; 60.89 percent in 1999; 62.79 percent in 2000; and 64.06 percent in 2002.<\/p>\n
As for the average monthly room rate, this year\u2019s figure went down compared with Sept. 2001\u2019s $80.41. In Sept. 2002, room rates averaged at $74.68.<\/p>\n
HANMI statistics represents over 2,500 rooms in 14 Saipan hotels\u2014Hotel Regency Saipan, Hotel Nikko Saipan, Dai-Ichi Hotel, Pacific Islands Club, World Resort Saipan, Saipan Grand Hotel, Marianas Resort Hotel, Aqua Resort Club, Aquarius Beach Tower, Coral Ocean Point, Century Hotel, Chalan Kanoa Beach Club, Saipan Ocean View Hotel, and Pacific Gardenia Hotel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hotel occupancy rate in September increased to an average of 79.33 percent, the highest for the month in the last eight years.<\/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-84639","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\/84639","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=84639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84639\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}