HANMI feasts on the Hyatt carcass while we’re supposed to buy their extra helpings of BS soup!

By Mabel Doge Luhan

Oh, boo hoo! The Hyatt is closing down! Now I have no idea where I’ll go to “savor” (as the Saipan newspapers always say) recently thawed grocery-store delicacies for “only” (as the Saipan newspapers also always say) seventy buckaroos!

But I’m here to tell you that limp three-star rooming-house was nothing remarkable, and the only thing that’s sad here is that we’re treating the Hyatt as if it had been our major tourism draw. Only Rafet and his gang would consider that place high-class, as in fact they did. Forty-some years since the Hyatt’s initial erection, it’s become little more than a fat juicy net operating loss waiting to be sold off!

Look at the world outside here in Saipan (gaze past the advertisers’ pubes if you work at the Variety): the beaches, the sunsets, the free-roaming BOOST felons very nervous about impending arrests. That’s our tourism draw. And also look at hotels in the world outside Saipan. See all those new buildings, clear tap water, toilet paper in the bathrooms, working internet, correctly spelled signage and even smiling employees? That’s the standard of hotels in the rest of the world (as the MVA would well know), and our Hyatt wasn’t meeting it. Trust you me: the Hyatt Regency Saipan was not bringing tourists to our shores.

Do you really, really think anyone came all the way here for the dumpy (by any standards but ours) Hyatt? And if not, why is Governor Palacios worrying about the tax-collection impact of the Hyatt closing down? Will the visitors who would have stayed at the Hyatt completely cancel their Saipan trips because the Hyatt is no more? That is extremely unlikely. More likely, they’ll stay at a different hotel — one that also remits taxes for revenue and profit, we should hope.

That’s assuming those other hotels are paying taxes. If that’s a concern, and it should be, we could do like every other jurisdiction in the history of the world, and start actually monitoring and enforcing business income reporting requirements, and I’m not talking about requiring barbecue stands to have cash registers. The fact that most tourism company owners live in “low-income housing” in Saipan doesn’t give a lot of confidence that they’re accurately reporting income.

If that income is being reported, then really, there shouldn’t be any decrease in tax collections from the Hyatt’s closing. Now, tax collections might be dismal because tourism is dismal, but those tax collections would not have been any better had the Hyatt stayed open. In other words, the Hyatt is closing because Saipan hotel revenues are really bad — and not the other way around.

But if we believe in the MVA’s “seats” theory of tourism, then the more “seats” and “rooms” we have, then the more tourists we’ll have, right? And the fewer “seats” and “rooms” we have, then the fewer tourists? Which is of course exactly backwards. In the real world, hotels don’t bring tourists. Tourists bring hotels. Yes, I know this is a little bit difficult to understand when all we know here in the CNMI is tropical Stalinism. Hyatt’s closure is indicative of ailing tourist numbers, certainly. But it’s not a cause of it.

But if the Hyatt’s closing is a big deal, isn’t it ever so interesting that the Variety’s front-page article about it is a press release from HANMI? Couldn’t the Variety cover the story on its own, rather than give a deeply interested party the bully pulpit for political sloganeering and begging for more money for MVA?

“[T]he Marianas Visitors Authority should be more empowered and funded,” and so on, says the HANMI press release. As is so often true with these press releases, it’s perfectly normal for a private business association to advertise itself and promote its political interests in a press release. No fault there. The fault is in the newspaper for printing a private business organization’s press release, verbatim, as the definite news on the matter. The content of HANMI’s press release is exactly what we’d expect from a private business promoting itself, and exactly what shouldn’t be the front-page, definitive article on what is supposedly a major news event.

Well of course HANMI is going to say that the Hyatt closing down is reason to fund MVA. They’d also say a new hotel being built is reason to fund MVA. They’d probably say that about the meth pipes my falcons always “catch” at Obyan Beach — more reason to fund MVA! MVA is the publicly funded marketing division of private businesses in Saipan. That (inept) publicly funded marketing operation at MVA embodies our belief that some private businesses, but not others, are entitled to publicly funded advertising, and that a cartel of those businesses, rather than the people at large, is the government’s constituency. Nothing new for the CNMI, is it? At least the Variety is honest about printing press releases nowadays, instead of the old days when they’d just let the business write the “article,” to be printed under a “reporter’s” byline.

HANMI cries all those crocodile tears about the Hyatt’s closure, when they know full well the other members of their cartel– ah, business association– will pick up the slack, and the decrease in competition will likely raise room rates. Funny how HANMI is always whinging about occupancy rates, but they fail to acknowledge that having fewer rooms in supply will raise occupancy rates, and prices charged — which I guess we’re supposed to think is a good thing, because what’s good for HANMI is good for us? I guess?

And HANMI’s claim that “hotels typically require around 70-80% hotel occupancy to stay in operation” is either an outright lie, or indicates that HANMI’s members have the world’s worst financial management if they need 70-80% occupancy just to stay afloat. Anybody with experience in the hotel industry — so nobody at MVA or the Variety — could tell you 50-60% is more like it, and few hotels anywhere in the world are consistently above 70%. But when you’ve got a gullible populace and a newspaper all too willing to repeat lies, then why not just go for it?

As for funding MVA? We’ve got quite a bit of the sunk cost fallacy, don’t we? “We’ve already given them this much, and our tourism industry is in the drain — so why not give them more!” Hotels do well, give MVA more money. Hotels fail, give MVA more money. Is there any state of the world that would lead MVA not to asking for more money? There isn’t, and that’s normal, because every government agency wants more money, always. But we should recognize that MVA’s requests are in their own best interests, not ours. And that the newspapers seem to be promoting an industry agenda, rather than serving the public. Because of course.

Does anyone really believe that MVA’s multimillion dollar budget — money that could have been refunded to the CNMI taxpayers, or used on medical referrals, or so many other useful things — made any positive impact in our tourist numbers? And say, really, why exactly are we spending money on advertising private businesses in a supposed fiscal crunch? Shouldn’t “stop paying the bills of private businesses” be a  priority when actual essential services are being cut? Or are we just going to keep sending the Malaysian Vacation Association to New Orleans, Australia, Singapore, Langkawi, and who knows where else, because they keep promising us that all those fat juicy tourists are just around the corner?

Nice job also, MVA, for doing the CCP’s propaganda work for them, and giving Hong Kong’s dying democracy a poke in the eye: “Flights from China to Marianas resume.” That was almost as good as your “Republic of South Korea.” Now repeat after me: “There is only one China, and it is the Republic of China.” (But don’t expect to keep your “special relationship” with that guy at Klook.)

Our tourism industry is in the toilet indeed. But the Hyatt’s closure isn’t making it any worse. Whatever few tourists would have stayed at Hyatt will stay at other hotels anyway, and we’ll collect those tax dollars from there. But now that MVA has shown itself to be an utter failure, isn’t it time to pull the plug?

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Mabel Doge Luhan is a woman of loose morals. She resides in Kagman V, where she pursues her passions of crocheting, beatboxing, and falconry.