Reducing the already meager budget of the Marianas Visitors Authority is not an option\u2014especially if the administration aims to raise tourist arrivals in the CNMI to 1 million in 2008, according to the MVA board.<\/p>\n
During a meeting yesterday morning, MVA officials said that, instead of reducing its funds, the government should actually give the agency a bigger budget.<\/p>\n
Board chair Marian Aldan-Pierce said it is about time for the government to look at MVA funding as \u201cinvestments, not spending.\u201d<\/p>\n
MVA board member appointee Jerry Tan, president of Tan Holdings Corp., said that MVA\u2019s advertising budget should never be sacrificed.<\/p>\n
\u201cMVA should be getting more funding to advertise, not cutting it. The focus is to get more money. \u2026We have no business cutting the advertising [funding],\u201d said Tan.<\/p>\n
Rota member Edward Maratita agreed, saying that if the Fitial administration\u2019s goal is to get 1 million tourists in four years, then it should help fund MVA.<\/p>\n
Besides, he said that \u201cMVA acts as the PR agency of the CNMI.\u201d<\/p>\n
The MVA management warned that if the government cuts its $5.9 million by $1.5 million\u2014as requested by the Office of Management and Budget\u2014this would jeopardize its promotional activities abroad. <\/p>\n
MVA acting managing director Tess Castro said that, based on a revised budget, her office could only come up with $433,774 reduction.<\/p>\n
This amount will be further reduced since the board just approved yesterday MVA\u2019s funding share for two projects this year: $60,000 for Happy Children in Paradise summer program and $25,000 for a 42K marathon in June. <\/p>\n
Over $5M needed for key markets<\/p>\n
MVA marketing program manager Wayne Pangelinan said that, based on the current budget, MVA would need a total of $2.3 million for the Japan market alone.<\/p>\n
Without the advertising cost, MVA would need $1.7 million for travel trades, airline costs, and representation fee, among others.<\/p>\n
On MVA\u2019s wish list, it also needs an additional $1.2 million in marketing for the Osaka route.<\/p>\n
Pangelinan said MVA hopes to get 600,000 tourists from Japan in four years.<\/p>\n
For the Korea market, MVA needs $1.2 million for marketing. This includes $520,000 as basic budget and $500,000 for advertising.<\/p>\n
MVA hopes to increase tourist arrivals from Korea from 65,000 in 2005 to 85,000 this year.<\/p>\n
In 2007, it hopes to get 95,000, and over 100,000 tourists in 2008.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very challenging but it\u2019s doable,\u201d said Pangelinan, noting that Asiana Airline\u2019s seating capacity a year already totals 112,840.<\/p>\n
For the China market, MVA needs $1.2 million for promotional activities.<\/p>\n
Based on conservative estimates, MVA hopes to increase Chinese tourist arrivals from 32,421 in 2005 to 37,000 this year, and 42,000 in 2007.<\/p>\n
For the Russia market, MVA needs $40,000 this year. <\/p>\n
The Fitial administration has adjusted the budget of most government agencies to reflect a revised revenue estimate of $198.5 million from the previous $213 million.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Reducing the already meager budget of the Marianas Visitors Authority is not an option\u2014especially if the administration aims to raise tourist arrivals in the CNMI to 1 million in 2008, according to the MVA board.<\/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-98404","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\/98404","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=98404"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98404\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}