THE passenger rate of Japan Airlines dropped by 28 percent in March, according to an airline official.
JAL sales manager for Saipan, Yasuyoshi Kinoshita, said they had 8,462 passengers from Tokyo last month.
Over 3,000 came from Osaka and 636 arrived on Saipan through extra flights for a total of 13,000.
In March 2001, JAL’s passenger rate was 18,106, including extra flights.
According to Kinoshita, there is a strong need for the CNMI government to aggressively market the destination in Japan if it wants to bring in more tourists.
The competition among tourism-based economies dependent on the Japanese market is very stiff at the moment, he said.
March is traditionally a good month because many university students from Japan travel overseas, and many families also schedule their vacation during this period, he said.
However, the CNMI failed to get a significant percentage of Japanese travelers last month as indicated by the downtrend in JAL’s March traffic rate.
“We need to make the CNMI more attractive. We should clean the beaches and the Garapan area,” Kinoshita said.
