The Marianas Visitors Authority hold its general membership meeting at Saipan World Resort on Thursday, June 20.
THE Marianas Visitors Authority held its biannual general membership meeting at Saipan World Resort on Thursday and voted to retain three incumbent board members and elect a new member.
A total of 110 MVA members voted to retain board members Gloria Cavanagh, vice president, Marianas E-Land Group of Companies; Masaru Sunaga, general manager, Tasi Tours Transportation; and Ivan Quichocho, general manager, Century Hotel/Century Tours/SeaTouch. They will serve another four-year term on the MVA board.
Former MVA Managing Director Vicky I. Benavente, vice president, Benavente & Associates, is the newest elected board member.
The acting MVA board chair, Cavanagh received 76 votes; Sunaga, 70; Quichocho, 68; and Benavente, 65.
The other nominees were incumbent board member Christopher Nelson, president, Flame Tree TV, Marianas Trekking, who received 53 votes; Doyi Kim, vice president, P&A Corporation, 31 votes; Perry Inos, partner and managing director, Tapped Out/AP Group, 31 votes; and Bochyul “James” Kim, president, Monster Pizza Pub and Sasamo Tour, 29 votes.
The rest of the MVA board members — one each from Tinian and Rota, and two from Saipan — are appointed by the governor. Among other requirements, the appointed board members must be Chamorro or Carolinian.
Very excited
MVA Managing Director Christopher Concepcion congratulated the four newly elected board members.
“We have three incumbents: Gloria, Ivan, and Masaru. And we have our newest board member, Vicky. She brings a wealth of experience to the tourism industry. Vicky used to be MVA’s managing director. She has also worked with many different hotels in the CNMI. Her experience is going to be valuable for us as we move the tourism industry forward,” Concepcion said.
For her part, Benavente said, “I feel very excited. There’s a lot of work to do, and we have [a] good feeling from the business community that we are all in this together. My number one priority is to help MVA get its funding, and keep it funded so we can compete in marketing to get visitors here, and get the word out.”
MVA is a public corporation whose primary funding source is the hotel occupancy tax.
As for promoting the CNMI in Japan, Benavente said, “It’s just too soon for me to speak about it, because I just saw it today. But I will support the Japan and Korea markets, and of course we need another source market and we all need to work on that.”
The guest speakers at the general meeting were MVA Korea in-country manager Sejin Kim and the representatives of MVA’s advertising agency for Japan, Kelly Nguyen and Asumi Yamayoshi, who introduced MVA’s new marketing campaign, “Between You and I.”
Very challenging
Asked about her re-election as an MVA board member, Cavanagh said, “It really is very challenging,” referring to the arrival projections.
“I think as you saw today, especially with our Japan marketing group that we just hired, we are trying to be a little bit innovative,” she added. “We know and understand the generations that are traveling, the millennials, Gen Z, are people that we don’t necessarily understand. We are reaching out to the Millennials and Gen Z, something that is new to us, but we are trying to think outside the box,” she said.
“With Chris Concepcion as the MVA managing director, one of the Millennials, he is trying to look at new avenues on how to actually reintroduce the Marianas to the Japan market. We’ve been off the shelf in the Japan market for so long that we need to reinvent ourselves. The new Japan ad agency is reinventing us,” Cavanagh said.
Japan used to be the CNMI’s primary tourism market. But annual arrivals from Japan have decreased each year since 2013 from 141,747 to 17,121 in 2019, before the pandemic. In FY 2023, Japan arrivals totaled 7,373.
