RECENTLY there are encouraging news for the people of Rota and the CNMI regarding a proposed chartered flight from Japan. This effort should be supported and promoted vigorously and, in my opinion, should have been pursued long time ago. I hope that the runway situation shouldn’t be an issue for I understand there are aircrafts that could travel from Japan to Rota with the existing runway at 6,000 ft. The only reason I know is that it is not economical and financially feasible for airlines to take this route at this point of time. At present, we are at the mercy of the airlines as they are also facing economic hardship due to new aviation regulations and the high cost of fuel. We hear from our MVA and CPA that tourist arrivals continue to decline and that airlines are either reducing flights or using smaller aircrafts. I am afraid this will continue unless we do improve the demand for travel to and from our CNMI. I think we should continue encouraging more extra chartered flights to CNMI and definitely work on new charter flights to Rota and Tinian. If airlines are hesitant, understandably so, I encourage the CNMI government to explore chartering flights on it own to bring the numbers to sustain our tourism industry. The government should explore this and bring in someone who could make it self-sustaining without straining our government financially.
Going back to the Rota airline situation, I see that we need to develop a short and long term planning. While we are working on our long term plan to improve our airport capacity, we need to immediately implement plans to build capacity to run our smaller and current carriers. Sometimes we are too focus on the big thing and tend to loose sight on what is happening right now. We all wanted to bring tourists by the numbers but it will never happen unless we take care of the smaller things like building demands and improving our tourist infrastructure.
Not necessarily new ideas but worth exploring and implementing to improve demand more so in the short term:
• Promote Rota for conferences or create a need to hold one like the most recent and impressive traditional Chamorro medicine conference held last week.
• Promote a unique festival similar to the Saipan Flame Tree and Tinian Hot Pepper Festivals.
• Promote Rota for sports competition especially traditional competitions like spear fishing, coconut husking, tree climbing, batu and others.
• Promote Rota for limited hunting that will not hamper its resources and its environment. I understand that our brothers and sisters from within the CNMI and Guam love coconut crab and dear keleguen and these too should be an opportunity to bring in people.
• Promote fully a big fishing derby. The CNMI should have three major derbies, Tinian Derby “Mafute Derby,” Saipan Derby “Tataga’ Derby,” and Rota Derby “Lagua Derby.” I am no fan of cock fighting but this too should be look at closely and promoted by our government for a major derby events within the CNMI.
• Promote Rota for Chamorro music concerts. We need to start bringing back traditional Chamorro music and practice it before we totally loose it. We all want rap and reggae music but we want to take lead and practice and promote our own traditional Chamorro music. It could also be a traditional Chamorro music festival.
• Promote Rota for hiking, camping, biking or regional “Survival” competition that would attract competitors from the islands and from international destination. Rota is so naturally configured and well bless with abundance of vegetation so ideal for variety of outdoor activities.
• Promote or advertise Rota better because there are so many news, events and activities going on, but I see little or no advertisement or promotional, now and then. It is vital that we put more effort in bringing these events and activities out on the media world for everyone to know. Yes, we do have budgetary problem, but what else is new. Some of these advertisements or promotional could be done for free.
While there are others worth considering, it is important that we share each others ideas and present them for consideration. I just wanted to comment the person who came out last two weeks ago in promoting Rota and sharing her ideas to all. We all have stakes in improving our economy and cannot totally depend on the government. We are the government. Ta abiba Luta lao munga malefa nui Marianas ta todos.

BENJAMIN MANGLONA
Plano, Texas