With tourism as the CNMI\u2019s only industry, the Marianas Visitors Authority should be adequately funded to sustain its marketing and promotion efforts, according to Tan Holdings president Jerry Tan.<\/p>\n
Tan said Tuesday that MVA, the economic engine of the islands, has been way underfunded, making it unable to compete with rival destinations in terms of marketing the Commonwealth.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe must support MVA and fund [it] properly and sufficiently to allow [it] to do a good job. As you know, we\u2019re not alone,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
While he recognizes the local government\u2019s financial difficulties, Tan maintained that other destinations like Guam and Hawaii are also suffering from the same economic downturn yet \u201cthey put out a lot of money to market their destination.<\/p>\n
He said it is crucial for CNMI to catch up with these other destinations. \u201cAll the other competing destinations are spending millions of dollars promoting their places\u2026 We must also be out there aggressively promoting the CNMI in our key markets, which are Japan, China, Korea, and Russia,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Tan, former MVA board chair, said that insufficient funding has made it \u201cvery difficult\u201d to advertise the CNMI as a destination for tourists.<\/p>\n
MVA\u2019s budget submission for fiscal year 2013 is at $11.6 million.<\/p>\n
According to Tan, the government should start taking a careful look at getting MVA the funding it needs to promote the islands and in turn revive its \u201conly industry.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tan, whose company will be launching Saipan Air on July 1, said the government cannot survive just by cutting costs. He stressed the need to increase revenues as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With tourism as the CNMI\u2019s only industry, the Marianas Visitors Authority should be adequately funded to sustain its marketing and promotion efforts, according to Tan Holdings president Jerry Tan.<\/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-161282","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\/161282","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=161282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161282\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}