Jerry Tan is new MVA board chair

Tan Holdings Corp. president Jerry Tan was elected yesterday as chairman of the Marianas Visitors Authority board.

Tan was unanimously voted to the post by his peers during an election of officers in yesterday’s board meeting.

Other elected officers are Marian Aldan-Pierce as vice-chair, Rita Arkle as secretary and Yoichi Matsumura as treasurer.

Other members are JM Guerrero, Emma Villagomez, Seiji Sato, Edward U. Maratita, and B.K. Park.

The new members—Tan, Villagomez, and Arkle—were also sworn in yesterday morning at the Governor’s Office prior to their meeting at the MVA office in San Jose.

Tan replaces long-serving MVA board chair David Sablan, who resigned from the panel in early January this year.

Evaluation

In an interview with reporters, Tan said he would focus on implementing “effective” measures to bring in more tourists to the CNMI.

To do this, the MVA will evaluate all its programs to identify shortcomings and to correct these.

Also part of this is to convene the board into a working committee to do a comprehensive evaluation of the programs.

The board intends to conduct a closed-door meeting on Tinian and Rota so they could conduct “a no-nonsense” evaluation of entire programs.

He said he would also push for more dialogue with airline companies and key agencies in efforts to bring in more tourists to the CNMI.

“You’ll see more dialogues with airlines, ports authority,” said Tan.

He said that, based on previous surveys, tourists visiting the CNMI “all have good experiences.”

“The problem is, we are not getting enough of them to come in,” he said.

He also said that, based on earlier evaluations, the CNMI has to offer more attractions to tourists, including more shopping centers.

“There’s a lot of opportunities for the CNMI. We just need to identify who are our partners,” he said.

He said the CNMI must continuously be promoted, especially in its key markets such as Japan and Korea, as well as China, which has granted the CNMI an approved destination status.

Tan earlier said that the market for the CNMI is huge, noting that its key markets—Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, and Russia—have close to 2 billion people combined.

The board chairman has also said that Saipan has to improve its shopping activities for tourists, especially at night.

He said these do not have to be large malls but more of a city-like shopping center “where people find lots of dining places, lots of shopping opportunities.”

Tan said tourists would love to find on Saipan a Universal City Walk-style of attraction.

He said the CNMI already possesses great natural attractions that need to be kept clean at all times.