Micronesian Resort Inc. President and Chief Executive Officer Brian Shin and acting Eland Group Vice President Gloria Cavanagh appear before the Senate Committee on Resources, Economic Development and Programs, and Gaming on Thursday.
“WE are also struggling,” Micronesian Resort Inc. President and Chief Executive Officer Brian Shin told members of the Senate Committee on Resources, Economic Development and Programs, and Gaming on Thursday.
Shin was responding to Sen. Jude Hofschneider’s statement regarding the closure of Hyatt Regency Saipan.
“I will be completely honest,” Shin said. “I think every hotel in the island is struggling right now. I cannot say we are an exception to that. … Right now, as we speak, for the summer, year over year the flight number has been decreasing.”
Shin said hotels in the CNMI only have one market, South Korea. The Japanese market, he added, is virtually non-existent.
Right now, he said they have less than 10 guests from Japan in all their three hotels: Kensington, PIC and Coral Ocean Resort
“Maybe they go somewhere else,” Shin added, referring to Japanese tourists.
He noted that the only carrier from South Korea is Asiana Airlines. “And you know what happened. They are pulling out,” he said. “We are trying everything to revive it, but again, all I’m saying is, we are also struggling,” Shin added.
Nonetheless, he said MRI is seeking a 15-year extension of Coral Ocean Resort’s land lease agreement with the Department of Public Lands “because we have to be optimistic.”
“We also have to put an effort to bring tourists back to the island,” Shin said.
He said Hyatt’s announcement that it was shutting down was surprising to some, “but it wasn’t a big surprise for us.”
“We are losing,” he said. “This is the fourth year [of losses] since I arrived.”
“Obviously Covid-19 did affect us, but we are [still] expecting to lose money this year. And with the number of tourists coming to the island, personally I don’t know if all the hotels will survive,” he said.
The chair of the Senate committee, Senate Floor Leader Corina Magofna, said she wasn’t surprised when she learned about Hyatt’s closure because the Hotel Association of the NMI and the Saipan Chamber of Commerce had repeatedly informed lawmakers about the dire situation of the hotels and the tourism industry.
“The writing has been on the wall all this time,” Magofna said. “Maybe some of us were just not paying attention. And to publicly come out and say this is ‘shocking, it’s surprising,’ you are just not paying attention. Period,” she said.
“But we don’t want to dwell on things like that. We need to figure out what we need to do to get out of this,” she said.
A fruitful discussion with investors about land lease deals, for example, “is one of the ways to make sure that we continue to foster good relationships with our current investors and continue to encourage more investors to come,” she said.
“We need to nurture the ones who are already here and have invested in our community for quite some time. So that is definitely being taken into consideration,” said Magofna who thanked Shin and MRI for “sticking around” despite the CNMI’s current economic condition.
Also attending the meeting were acting E-Land Group Vice President Gloria Cavanagh, Department of Public Lands Secretary Teresita A. Santos, other DPL officials, Sens. Paul A. Manglona, Jude U. Hofschneider and Frank Q. Cruz.
MRI is an affiliate of E-Land Group.
