Governor Arnold Palacios of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands is back from Japan where he met with government and travel industry leaders hoping to "reset" tourism from there. But is Japan interested, and is the CNMI ready?

"Most of these visits are to reset and reinvigorate the Japanese market," he said.

Palacios briefed media on his three-day trip to Japan to bring tourists back to the Commonwealth amid its pivot away from China, which made up half of visitors pre-COVID. Currently, United Airlines flies three times a week on the Japan route, able to accommodate 166 passengers on each flight with a local government subsidy.

The latest visitor arrivals data show a depressed traveling atmosphere. 734 people visited Saipan in December and just 453 in November.

Gloria Cavanagh, chair of the Marianas Visitors Authority, said, "They're traveling domestically because it is so highly subsidized. Now come May 8 of this year, they are actually going to change the category of COVID to a Category 5, which is more of an influenza. So what that means is that all these restrictions...go away."

The administration says they're also hoping to bring back Skymark Airlines, which is based at the Haneda Airport, a location that the administration says they'd like to turn into a hub for tourists traveling to the islands because of its convenient location. But what will tourists do when they get here? The governor said two major blemishes for the CNMI according to industry experts are its run-down tourist sites and lack of activities.

"How do we fix those sites when there is no one person who has the authority to do so? And so it keeps on going around in circles and this is basically a problem that we've had since the 14th Legislature," added Cavanagh.

But the MVA is hoping to have more of that authority through legislation they're working on in the Senate. The governor agrees it is time to clean up, saying, "Everybody has a stake in this. The government can only do so much."