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SAIPAN — Casino investors are buying up hotel properties on Rota, the second-largest island of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, in hopes of attracting military gamblers once the U.S. increases its presence in nearby Guam.
Japanese and Korean investors separately bought two Rota hotels this month in anticipation of turning them into the island's first casinos.
Many of their customers would be 8,000 Marines and their 9,000 dependents who will be moved from Okinawa, Japan to Guam, located just 35 miles to the south of Rota.
The new casinos could take business from the Tinian Dynasty Hotel and Casino, located on the island of Tinian to the north of Rota.
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