On Your Mark, Get Set... Tourism's Take-off in Micronesia
Hezel, Francis X. (2017). On Your Mark, Get Set... Tourism's Take-off in Micronesia. Honolulu, HI: East-West Center.
- Has attachment: File:MKAT3HPJ.pdf
Abstract: When Continental Air Micronesia inaugurated regular jet air service to the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands in the late 1960s, it created new links between the Islands and both the US mainland and East Asia. The new flight service opened commercial possibilities for islands then struggling with an uncertain political and economic future. Tourism was at best a distant hope as an engine for economic growth. Chuuk, Marshall Islands, Northern Marianas, Palau, Pohnpei, and Yap all began promoting tourism at the same time, with roughly comparable infrastructure and a total of 238 hotel rooms among them. In 1970, Continental built three new 50-room hotels in Chuuk, Palau, and the Northern Marianas and began vigorously promoting the islands as a Pacific paradise getaway destination. What happened over subsequent decades in these three island groups is the subject of this study.
The Northern Marianas, mainly the principal island of Saipan, began to develop a rapidly expanding Japanese visitor market in the early 1970s. The proximity to Japan and slightly superior infrastructure may have aided its comparatively early development of tourism. By 1996, Saipan was welcoming nearly three-quarters of a million tourists yearly. The 1997 Asian economic crisis, along with land-lease issues and the alienation of a major Asian carrier, sub- sequently contributed to a dramatic downturn in tourism. After partially rebounding in 2003 on the strength of a vibrant Korean market, an airline crash a decade later resulted in a second major downturn. The Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) has still not fully recovered from these shocks, although visitor numbers have shown encouraging growth in recent years.
In Palau, the tourism industry had a much slower start than in the Northern Marianas. It was only with the completion of its first luxury hotel in 1985, built in partnership with a Japanese investor, that tourism first took off. The market, originally heavily Japanese, diversified in time to include Koreans, Taiwanese, and more recently mainland Chinese. Dramatic increases in tourists from China during the past several years have expanded the total to over 150,000 visitors yearly. But the tourist boom has increasingly strained facilities and threatened unique environ- mental attractions. Today Palau is the only Pacific nation implementing policies to reduce total visitor arrivals while attracting more high-value clientele.
Chuuk experienced an initial limited surge in tourism because of its appeal to divers interested in exploring the sunken Japanese “ghost ships” from World War II. This proved to be a narrow niche market, however, and tourist numbers over the next 40 years never grew beyond a few thousand a year. Although visitor numbers are slightly higher in Chuuk than in other states of the Federated States of Micronesia, the country has yet to realize the economic benefits it once hoped for from tourism. Its distance from principal Asian markets and higher airfare may be the main factors in its failure to expand the industry.
Taken together, the three case studies suggest that institutional dynamics and infrastructure may not be the most important prerequisites for the complex process of tourism development. Convenient location, strong commercial linkages with a solid start-up market (e.g., Japan), and reliable air service seem to be among the most important factors at work in the success of Palau and the Northern Marianas. As tourism markets mature, other factors become critical —especially the availability of land for development and the readiness of the island nation to respond rapidly to new opportunities. Even so, there remains an element of serendipity to tourism growth that should not be dismissed.
Policymakers elsewhere in the Pacific may reasonably look to tourism as a catalyst for national economic development, but what these case studies suggest is that they should not assume all Pacific states can successfully summon a tourist industry at will. Moreover, since tourism is a highly mobile and competitive economic activity, the gains made in nurturing an emerging tourism industry can fluctuate almost overnight due to global forces well beyond the control of island governments or investors.
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MAG: 2766426625 CorpusID: 134890319 OpenAlex: W2766426625
