Overwhelmed by tourists, Palau plans to halve chartered flights from China

By Ryan Kilpatrick, March 23, 2015

The tiny island nation of Palau, rapidly becoming a favorite vacation getaway for more adventurous mainland Chinese travelers, has just announced plans to halve the amount of chartered flights incoming from China.

62 percent of visitors to the Pacific paradise in February were Chinese, a 16 percent jump from the previous year. With its limited resources and infrastructure, however, Palau's tourism board is struggling to handle the influx of holiday-makers who, numbering 10,955, represent a 50 percent increase in the number of people in the Micronesian country.

Nanae Singeo, managing director of the Palau Visitors Authority, said in a report that “this is a very sudden influx, so we are trying to understand the situation... We have never experienced this much tourism before and the magnitude is really giving us a lot of pressure. We are a very tiny country with scarce resources, so this sudden increase is an unknown challenge for us.”

Even though tourism accounts for nearly 85 percent of the local economy, Palauans are concerned about long-term environmental repercussions on their wildlife and natural landscape, and the government has responded to citizens' concerns by controlling visitor numbers.

Palau’s president Tommy Remengesau insists that the move is intended not to censure their Chinese visitors, but instead to alleviate pressure on local resources:

Do we want to control growth or do we want growth to control us? It will be irresponsible for me as a leader if this trend continues... I am not only looking at the present but, as a leader, I am looking after tomorrow.

While the decision to halve incoming flights from China wasn't discriminatory, Singeo has explained that they would like to avoid becoming too dependent on any one market.

Visitor numbers have increased 34 percent over last year thanks to the Chinese influx, but the local economy has not experienced a similar boost. This is attributed to different buying habits, with Chinese visitors preferring to sit on the beach while Japanese, Taiwanese and Koreans are more likely to venture out for diving and other activities.