McDonald’s Saipan owner and president Joe Ayuyu said attracting more visitors from Japan should be the priority of the island’s lawmakers.
“We need to concentrate on this market because Japan is the goose that lays the golden eggs for the CNMI,” he said.
“Japan may be hit by the global crisis but millions of Japanese are still going on tours everywhere,” Ayuyu said.
Moreover, Japan’s proximity to the CNMI and the visa-free entry make it easy for Japanese tourists to come to the islands, he added.
Instead of cultivating other emerging markets, which require years of efforts and investments, “Japan is right there, ripe for the picking,” Ayuyu said.
Statistics from the Marianas Visitors Authority from January to November last year showed that a total of 175,218 Japanese tourists visited the CNMI.
In 2008, there were 213,299 tourists from Japan.
With Japan’s current population hovering near 128 million, Ayuyu said getting less than 200,000 visitors a year is “barely scratching the surface” of the market.
“We should work hard to attract even just a very small percentage of Japan’s population and even just doubling the present number of visitors could do a lot to our economy,” he added.
He said the political leaders in the island have a lot of work to do.
“They have to develop a long-term vision for the economic development of the island,” he said.
