{"id":234880,"date":"2016-08-24T06:00:05","date_gmt":"2016-08-23T20:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=234880"},"modified":"2016-08-24T06:00:05","modified_gmt":"2016-08-23T20:00:05","slug":"mva-supports-giving-2-pct-hotel-tax-mayors-offices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/mva-supports-giving-2-pct-hotel-tax-mayors-offices\/","title":{"rendered":"MVA supports giving 2 pct of hotel tax to mayor\u2019s offices"},"content":{"rendered":"
Marianas Visitors Authority managing director Chris Concepcion, right, talks to board director Nick Nishikawa after last Friday\u2019s board meeting at the MVA office conference room in San Jose. (Jon Perez)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Marianas Visitors Authority managing director Chris Concepcion said they are supporting a pending bill at the Legislature that aims to give 2 percent of the hotel occupancy tax to the Saipan, Tinian, and Rota mayor\u2019s offices. Concepcion said MVA only wants the assurance of expanding the use of the funds.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have no objections of having a share of the hotel occupancy tax to the mayor\u2019s offices. There\u2019s a pending bill at the Legislature that aims to give 2 percent to them and it\u2019s not a bad idea giving it to them,\u201d said Concepcion.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy only comment is they expand the use of the funding because right now it says only for charter flight promotions. They need to expand it to include destination enhancement and promotional marketing initiatives,\u201d Concepcion said.<\/p>\n

He added that even though the money comes from the MVA Trust Fund, they have no say on how it is spent.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no accounting of that funding, it goes directly to the mayor\u2019s office. Not that we want to have a say, but ideally we would want to have like an annual report and how they spent the money. Just to ensure it is spent as it is meant to be, which is in tourism,\u201d said Concepcion.<\/p>\n

The Saipan Mayor\u2019s Office, under Mayor David M. Apatang, has a cultural exchange program where students from Japan and Korea visit the island where they spend time learning the local culture. The said program helps MVA\u2019s chief task of promoting the CNMI as a tourist destination.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe funds can support these kinds of programs, something that MVA definitely supports.<\/p>\n

For the longest time we like the idea of having Japanese and Korean students that come here when they are young and have these good memories they spent in our islands, that image builds a lot for us and it is a good thing,\u201d said Concepcion.<\/p>\n

He added that right now the only assistance MVA gives to the Saipan Mayor\u2019s Office is providing leis in the meet and greet of the visiting delegations at the airport and gifts that would remind the tourists of Saipan.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe all have our satellite offices in Japan and Korea promote educational tourism. We do have bunch of student groups that do come over every now and then, and throughout the year,\u201d Concepcion said. \u201cWe\u2019ve been doing a lot in promoting Saipan as a good destination for students and experience the local culture.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marianas Visitors Authority managing director Chris Concepcion said they are supporting a pending bill at…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":234883,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2714,170,62,212],"class_list":["post-234880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","tag-chris-concepcion","tag-japan","tag-korea","tag-mva"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234880","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\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234880\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}