On Monday, the airline, which is partly owned by Sichuan provincial government, launched the Shanghai-Saipan inaugural flight using Airbus 330 which can accommodate 236 passengers.
By July, Sichuan is also planning to operate two more weekly direct flights between Sichuan’s capital city, Chengdu and Saipan, in time for the summer school holiday season, according to Tinian Dynasty International Travel Chairman Michael Kwan, who brokered the deal for the new China flights.
Sichuan Airlines Group President and Chairman of the Board Lan Xin Guo is visiting Saipan and Tinian for the first time and told reporters he wants to personally see the islands that he had heard so much about in China.
The airline’s four weekly charter flights here were made possible through Tinian Dynasty which buys air seats from Sichuan and sells it to potential travelers in Shanghai, Guangzhou and elsewhere, through its tour agency partner and Century Travel, which also has offices here and in China
Bruce A. Bateman, MVA marketing manager, told the Variety Century Travel and Tinian Dynasty are jointly promoting the destination in China..
MVA provides them promotional materials in turn.
“We now have three times as many arrival seats as we did just last week. We’ve increased by a factor of three and in about two months, it will increase again by another two flights from Chengdu, so we’re lucky in that respect,” Bateman said.
Close to 20,000 Chinese tourists had visited the CNMI this fiscal year, thus far.
They were allowed entry through the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s discretionary parole authority in the absence of a U.S. visa and a visa waiver exemption under the Guam-CNMI Visa Waiver Program that took effect on Nov. 28, 2009.
The CNMI is the only U.S. jurisdiction outside the mainland that was granted an Approved Destination Status, or ADS, by China, allowing Chinese to freely travel to the destination for tourism purposes.
The ADS was issued in 2005 but the Chinese market has not been successfully tapped over the years.
Bateman said part of the problem is the government’s limited promotional funding.
This time, however, MVA is relying on Tinian Dynasty and Century Travel, to do the promotions.
“We have partners that we work with in China on the ground. They have offices there to take care of media promotional items. Everything that we can afford to do, we are doing. Sadly, we cannot afford to do as much as we want to do,” said Bateman
“The truth of the matter is we don’t have a budget to man an office there,” he added and noted that they only provide the travel agencies with materials and promotional assistance when needed.
The visiting tourists from Guangzhou are a mixed crowd of old and young. Many of them are traveling overseas for the first time.
