FIJI TIMES 07 March 2020 – On Saipan, the tourist area resembles a ghost town. Restaurants are being shuttered, shops reducing hours, resorts and water parks sit empty.
The Northern Marianas, a US territory in the North Pacific, is meant to be humming at this time of year. March is normally the height of the visitor season, with tens of thousands of tourists flying in from three big markets: China, South Korea and Japan.
But as these countries have been gripped by the coronavirus Covid-19, the Marianas’ tourism-dependent economy has crumbled. Tour groups and flights from China have stopped altogether, numbers from South Korea have shrivelled.
“Tourism is the only economy here,” said Gloria Cavanagh, a resort owner and the chair of the Marianas Hotel Association. “It is a huge crisis here.”
While no cases of Covid-19 have been confirmed in any Pacific countries, the effects of the reductions in tourist numbers, a lack of airfreight, and a withered supply chain are already hitting several countries hard, with grave fears about how fragile economies would weather a prolonged outbreak.
