The Hotel Association of the Northern Mariana Islands and the Saipan Chamber of Commerce issued a joint news release AGAIN pushing their favorite dead issue: tourism from China. Calm down HANMI and Chamber. The hangover from that big party you all enjoyed during the Torres regime should have been over since the pandemic ended and it was clear those Chinese tourists weren’t coming back. The euphoric clamor for those tourists should at this point be as sober as the China outbound tourist market is about traveling to the Mariana Islands.
Get a grip, HANMI and Chamber. And read the room. Better yet, read the facts.
FACT: As of 2024, the Chinese outbound market has only been able to recover to nearly 75 percent of pre-pandemic levels, with more than 70 percent of those trips to Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan.
FACT: China’s slowed economy and currency depreciation have made their outbound travelers more cautious about spending. High inflation and visa processes to places like CNMI and Guam make the Marianas far less desirable to the Chinese markets HANMI and the Chamber want the government to court.
FACT: Several of HANMI and the Chamber’s members were recipients of Torres administration-issued federal funds in the form of tens of millions in corporate welfare that ended up producing nothing of significance for tourism recovery.
All this blabber about the glory days of Chinese tourism does nothing to change any of these facts. It’s time for you to get your heads out of the clouds or the clouds of smoke from the dispensary and deal with reality. And if you think that reality has changed with the new Republican government, boy do you need to clean that pipe you’re smoking from. The new regime has already set its sights on revoking EVS-TAP, and there is bipartisan opposition to expanding Chinese influence in the Marianas.
We’ll humor you gentlemen for a moment. Let’s say for the rest of this year planes from Korea or Taiwan or Japan or even directly from Shanghai begin to bring full loads of Chinese tourists into Saipan. What are you going to wow them with?
Los Angeles-priced hotel stays in Kentucky-motel-style rooms? Taxi rackets that rip off the tourists on their way past meth-packed poker parlors? You can show all these imaginary tourists that giant empty falling-apart casino in the middle of Garapan that you all chomped at the bit to ruin the CNMI economy. The MVA tour company line can even be, “Hey, China Built This!”
Run that one by the CCP. They’ll love it.
And by the way, HANMI and Chamber: No one is stopping you from heading over to China to market yourselves to those tourists. For organizations that love to profess their undying love of the free market, you sure have made a habit of asking for corporate welfare and assistance from the very government you blame for your inability to get those tourists onto Saipan and into your businesses.
