HYATT Regency Saipan, which employs mostly U.S. qualified workers, on Monday said it “will cease its operation permanently and will no longer be a Hyatt branded property” effective 11:59 p.m., June 30, 2024.
“Hyatt booking channels will no longer accept reservations from April 29, 2024,” it said on its website.
Variety was unable to get a comment from Hyatt’s management, but a well-placed source said the Japanese owner met with the general staff on Monday afternoon to inform them of the decision to close the hotel.
“We were told no new owner — just closure,” the source said.
Saipan Portopia Hotel Corp., which has owned the hotel since 1991, signed a 40-year land lease agreement with the CNMI government in Oct. 2021.
At the time, Saipan Portopia President Hitoshi Nakauchi said “the Covid-19 pandemic has caused so much suffering and massive impact on the tourism industry,” but “we are seeing the world re-opening and connecting once again.” He said the “return to pre-Covid days will be slow and difficult,” but he was looking forward “to the day when flights between Tokyo and Saipan return.”
Since then, however, arrivals from Japan — and China, the CNMI’s second major tourism market — remain low.
In February 2024, a hotel official told lawmakers that prior to the pandemic, “Hyatt at any given point, 70% of their occupancy was Chinese.”
In November 2023, the Saipan Chamber of Commerce and the Hotel Association of the NMI informed lawmakers that the tourism industry was in a “desperate mode.”
Current hotel occupancy and the revenue generated from it “are not covering” their costs. “We are fielding cash losses,” a HANMI official said.
Recently, HANMI reported a 36% average occupancy rate among its 12 member hotels for March 2024.
HANMI said its “profit market starts at about 80% occupancy.”
