Current and former employees of Hyatt Regency Saipan pose for a group photo during a get-together at the Micro Beach Pavilion on Saturday.
HYATT Regency Saipan helped them provide a good life to their families, the hotel’s former human resources director Josephine Mesta said on Saturday.
She was among the hotel’s more than 100 current and former employees who showed up for a get-together at the Micro Beach Pavilion on Saturday.
Hyatt Regency Saipan, after 43 years, is closing its doors on June 30, 2024, its owner Saipan Portopia Corporation announced last month, citing “global shifts and continued challenges impacting Saipan and its tourism sector.”
Mesta said they all want to express their gratitude to Hyatt “for being there for us.”
“Our children were all born and raised under the Hyatt and we all managed to provide a good life for them,” she said. “We had good lives. We will be forever grateful to the Hyatt for being here and for changing us to be the people we are. Majority of us are good people, very disciplined and well-trained. That is something that we are really grateful for,” she added.
Former training manager Tano Taitano, who worked for the hotel from 1990 to 1996, said, “Hyatt Regency Saipan is so special. We … saw how it changed people, and how their careers grew.”
He said the Hyatt believes in giving people opportunity. “And we trained them. We provided education and opportunity. And we are seeing people here who started at the front desk and then became managers in other divisions,” he added.
There’s also the “feeling of family,” Taitano said, which is what makes Hyatt Regency Saipan different from other hotels he had worked with.
“I’ve been with three other Hyatt hotels. This is the special one. Good people. I went to Hyatt Guam in 1996 and then to Grand Hyatt in Kauai in 2000, but Hyatt Regency Saipan is very special. I’m just back from Guam after 23 years. I’m now with Westin. This Hyatt on Saipan is the most special one,” he reiterated.
HR assistant manager Penny Jones said the get-together on Saturday was organized by their former HR director and the current HR team.
“It’s a great event when we get to reminisce [about] the Hyatt, which we will forever keep and cherish,” she said.
She also wants to thank the community for supporting Hyatt Regency Saipan, and the management and the owners for always believing in them, the employees.
It is “heartbreaking” that Hyatt Saipan is closing, Jones said. “The memories and the family that we’ve created while we worked at Hyatt will be forever cherished,” she added.
Former rooms director Roselyn Quintanilla, who retired in January 2022 and was hired again in November 2022, resigned in December 2023.
“Today is great day,” she said on Saturday. “It’s so nice that there’s so many people that are no longer with the Hyatt, but they came back.” She said they were all happy to have such a gathering so they could say farewell to the Hyatt. “We are all really sad. Hyatt has been our life here. And not only us but all the people here on Saipan.”
Former assistant front desk manager Wendie Escota said it was “a very heartwarming event because they were the people who became family just being there.”
Escota, who is now the general manager of Marianas Eye Institute, worked for Hyatt Regency Saipan for five years. She said her husband also worked with the Hyatt for 20 years as assistant manager for housekeeping.
“We remembered the past, and talked about the present, and it’s sad there won’t be a future with the Hyatt, but we still have a future with the family we built while we were with the Hyatt,” she said.
