MVA wastes more of our money on stupid projects

By Mabel Doge Luhan
Just like MVA during the pandemic, I’m busy even when you least expect it!

The June 19th Marianas Variety published two absolutely professional, well-written, factual articles by Bryan Manabat. They’re really well-done: not investigative journalism or anything fancy like that, but at least they get the grammar and the facts right, and are written in a journalistic style. That’s a big improvement. Put Bryan Manabat in the winners of the day column!

You might think that if I can’t mock Manabat, my day’s work is done. Far from it! Not only did the Malaysian Vacation Association, oops, Marianas Visitors Authority announce a meeting of general members, but it announced its new ad campaign, as well as a campaign to license tour guides! My, how busy they’ve been!

“With the increase in the volume of visitors to our islands,” George Sablan says, justifying his new job (Kandit will ask about salaries soon! Stay tuned!). Right: the increase in the volume of visitors to our islands. Has he maybe confused our islands with the many other islands where the MVA staff often vacations on our dime? Increase in the volume of visitors? It’s nice to be optimistic, but — do these folks have any inkling of what’s going on?

“This will help raise the reputation of our destination,” Sablan continues. Really? Our reputation problem is because MVA doesn’t restrict who can be a tour guide? This is our reputation problem? Again: do these folks have any idea of what’s going on? Have they found Korean social media postings complaining about tour guides that haven’t been vetted and approved by MVA? How about Korean social media postings complaining about public cockfighting, aggressive beggar-addict-thieves in parking lots and business entrances, taxis and even hotel rooms much more expensive than Seoul’s, and on and on…?

Even if MVA is hoping to make money, officially or unofficially, from this venture, it only demonstrates their complete ignorance of tourism and business. Tour guides are a thing of the past. Even in Korea and Japan, guided tours are only for elderly rural people.

Unless they want to categorize anyone driving tourists around, helping them in the Grotto, and so on, as a “tour guide.” I have no idea how they’d ever enforce that. Nor how the MVA — which has proven that it doesn’t know what CNMI stands for, nor what Korea is officially called — is suddenly the authority on the “right” things to show tourists.

That’s not even the biggest point. Isn’t MVA’s goal getting us more tourists and more tourism, rather than less? Have they thought of that? Their goal is not supposed to be selling tour-guide courses, collecting license fees and bribes. Nor is MVA’s job function keeping a database of the names, phone numbers, immigration statuses, and mandatory physical addresses of all the fit, strong, handsome young men who would just do anything to be a licensed tour guide.

But then, if they think we have an “increase in the volume of visitors to our islands,” they might also think we have too many tour guides, and too much tourism business.

There’s this gem of an MVA prognostication from last year, which opens with Chris Concepcion dressed up like David Hodo, and closes with him completely unironically quoting JFK:

Despite all the inching and edging Chris promised us, we didn’t experience an increase in tourism, did we? Which is not so much Chris’s fault for not knowing in advance — because no one can know these things in advance — but claiming to know in advance, and holding himself out as a prognosticator.

Maybe we’ll get some more excellent prognosticating from the MVA staff. They’re flying in from Japan and Korea, on our dime! (Did you forget that we have fully staffed offices in Japan and Korea? No other US jurisdiction does that. But no other US jurisdiction has a tourism authority enjoying FRESH LOBSTER and PRIVATE PLUNGE POOLS.) I guess now that the kids are out of school, they wanted free summer trips to Saipan, or they’re desperately needed to attend this very important meeting: you choose.

And the new marketing campaign!

“Between You and I.” Which is so blatantly ungrammatical it sounds like a joke. And in English-grammar-obsessed Korea and Japan, will go over like a meth balloon. Who comes up with this stuff, and how much did MVA pay per word for this four-word slogan that makes us yet again a laughingstock? (Remember “Student First” on school buses and “Senior Citizen On Board” on manamko shuttles?)

I suggest follow-up campaigns such as:

Me Love Saipan!

Come Visit We!

Us Happy Your Here!

And perhaps the finisher: Why Us Nothing Tourist?!

Sounds ultra super new, doesn’t it?

Oh. That’s also apparently the agency MVA chose to run this campaign. You know: one of those reliable agencies with a lot of contacts in Japan and Korea that can be trusted with an inexperienced client like MVA.

No, actually not. UltraSuperNew is, let’s say, ultra super new. Kelly Nguyen claims seven years of experience in marketing, with a degree in, wait for it, fashion communications, and experience as a, wait for it, VJ at some place that’s called Bae Tokyo. I don’t think that’s British Aerospace.