Making Tourism Our Business: #The Marianas #VisitTheMarianas #MyMarianas

The attention of the world has been on Saipan and the Marianas in the last week with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange’s whirlwind stop in Saipan to plead guilty in U.S. district court to a felony charge of violating the Espionage Act. Sentenced to time served in a British prison, he walked away a free man.

Thanks to the deluge of resulting international media coverage, millions of people across the globe are now asking themselves, where and what are Saipan and the Marianas? It’s been an incredible amount of free publicity exposure that we could not have otherwise afforded, and there’s no better time than now to amplify that exposure to promote the Marianas through a collective community effort online.

There is strength in numbers when we speak with one voice. We’ve seen the effectiveness of this in several online voting contests in recent years, where the people of the Marianas have rallied in support of islanders vying for various titles in the internationally and in U.S. mainland. Thanks to our collective vote, we have helped them secure “People’s Choice” titles and more.

The trend in marketing and promotions in today’s travel culture has shifted tremendously to on-line word-of-mouth testimonials from people who have actually been to the destination. One of the best ways we can use this promotional opportunity to our advantage is by posting, liking, and sharing content about the Marianas with strategic hashtags, like #TheMarianas, #VisitTheMarianas, and #MyMarianas, along with respective island tags, like #Saipan #Tinian #Rota #NorthernIslands. This will provide several benefits, including 1) building awareness of The Marianas, 2) helping people find us online, and 3) increasing engagement with people interested in us. Uniting under common hashtags, we can amplify the message of The Marianas around the world.

This is a strategy the MVA has applied for many years with its numerous campaigns in our off-shore markets, such as Korea, Hong Kong and Japan. We partner with KOLS—key opinion leaders—with large social media followings to create and share content about the Marianas, with our hashtags across all types of platforms: Instagram, YouTube, Meta (formerly Facebook), Naver, and more. We promote and recruit social media followers through on-line campaigns and in-person events, like the recent International Travel Expo Hong Kong we attended. Through the years, this strategy has generated tens of millions of dollars in free public relations exposure in various languages.

But honestly, there’s no better group of people to promote the Marianas than the people of the Marianas. When it comes to our way of life, our history, our culture, our values, our islands, we are the KOLs…the best places to chill, the way we help each other as a community in good times and in bad, the beauty and cultural secrets of our breathtaking nature, the ways we move with mindfulness in the way we respect others and our environment, and more. These are the beautiful ways of the Marianas worth sharing with the world. And we can do just that with a simple common hashtag.

There are several best-practices related to hashtags worth mentioning, including the optimal number of hashtags for various platforms: Meta, 2-3; Instagram, 3-5; YouTube, 3-5, TikTok, 3-5. Check out other recommendations for maximizing post effectiveness.

Mr. Assange has left the Marianas. The media his visit brought here have largely departed, as well. But the effect of that visit will remain as the name of Saipan and the Marianas is forever tied to this story. Now is the time to use that as a springboard to another story we can take around the world…the story of who we are as a people and a destination. Your favorite fishing spot, the generous buffet at your grandmother’s birthday, your preferred hiking trail, your pick for the best happy hour location, your traditional cultural knowledge, your family…let’s tag together and share the parts of our story of what makes the Marianas an incredible place to live and visit.

Christopher A. Concepcion