Check out MVA\u2019s website. Now look at Palau\u2019s, the Marshalls\u2019, the FSM\u2019s or Guam\u2019s. The difference is really unbelievable. These other places have good solid information, photos, and links; in other words, what you\u2019d expect. (Let\u2019s not even think about Hawaii, we cannot even think about being that professional. But can\u2019t MVA get up to Marshallese standards at least?)<\/p>\n
MVA\u2019s website has a section on culture, about half a page. Yes, given the history, the impact of other cultures, the traditions, family, the church and on and on and all they know about local culture can be said in half a page.<\/p>\n
Golf. All they have to say on that page is said in three sentences. What? People here who have never golfed, never been on a course, think it\u2019s a very odd game if the guy with the lowest score wins, those people know more than three sentence about Saipan golf.<\/p>\n
Diving. In about two paragraphs it says there is some World War II stuff under the water near Saipan and some more near Tinian. No kidding, that\u2019s it. There are no photos on the main page, you need to go to another page to even see water.<\/p>\n
Events. In October there is a \u201c50km Hell of the Marianas fun ride.\u201d You may ask, what is \u201cfun\u201d about \u201chell\u201d? You may wonder if this is in cars, on horses, on bikes, or roller skates? None of these questions can be answered without calling a contact number on Saipan. Who in Japan or Korea is going to do that?<\/p>\n
The internet is how people check things out, including vacation spots. People also trust and go to official sites. Some hotel can put up anything and rip a tourist off. The official tourist site is the go-to place to get good, reliable information, yet it seems MVA it not able to put up a decent site, thus leaving uninformed potential tourist to go elsewhere for information and vacations, like Guam and Palau.<\/p>\n
The NMI has a lot to offer a tourist, yet it seems MVA is guarding our events and activities, not to mention culture and natural beauty, like a government secret. They don\u2019t even list an email address! That\u2019s right, you can\u2019t click on the site and find a way to email questions to the government agency that is meant to reach out to visitors unless you are in Japan or Korea, but even that is not to someone here in the CNMI.<\/p>\n
If MVA is here to promote tourism, then it needs people who know the world has changed in the past 20 years and adjustments must be made. Servicing a few travel agencies is not helpful.<\/p>\n
The website logo could be but should not be, \u201cMaybe you can find us, but you can\u2019t talk to us, and you\u2019ll never figure out what we have to offer!\u201d Sure, there is no money but the CNMI can\u2019t afford not to at least update the website. A decent website is not expensive. Things are only getting worse for the economy. Tourism needs to be aggressively pursued. If that costs money, then spend money to make money. Getting MVA, its website, and the entire organization into the 21st century is not expensive, its vital.<\/p>\n
[B]Jose Hozebee [\/B]
\n[I]Sadog Tasi, Saipan[\/I]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Check out MVA\u2019s website. Now look at Palau\u2019s, the Marshalls\u2019, the FSM\u2019s or Guam\u2019s. The difference is really unbelievable. These other places have good solid information, photos, and links; in other words, what you\u2019d expect. (Let\u2019s not even think about Hawaii, we cannot even think about being that professional. But can\u2019t MVA get up to Marshallese standards at least?)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-155449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155449\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}