MVA Managing Director Perry Tenorio said the CNMI tourism five-year strategic initiative already expired last year and the data collected are already old having been gathered back in 2006.
“Our strategic initiative actually expired in 2010 and we asked that the company (the U.S.-based AMI) review it and adjust it,” Tenorio said.
The previous five-year strategic plan targeted to bring one million tourists to the CNMI by 2010 within the period, which never happened.
The plan then was to entice at least half a million Japanese tourists to visit the islands from 2006 through 2010.
An additional 150,000 tourists from South Korea and 250,000 from China and the rest from Russia and other places would have completed the one million visitors’ goal of MVA.
Tenorio said a lot of their strategic goals have to be adjusted to align with the islands’ federalized immigration system.
“Since then we had transitioned to the federal system. All those data will be updated with regard to our opportunities and challenges,” he told the Variety.
The new strategic plan also aims to change the CNMI’s tourism marketing strategies in its key markets of Japan and Korea as well as China, which it considers as a major potential market.
The China-based Sichuan Airlines recently launched four charter flights a week between Saipan, Shanghai and Guangzhou.
