The Marianas Visitors Authority’s management and board need to resign. And if they don’t, the Commonwealth legislature needs to abolish the agency and transfer tourism marketing under the governor’s direct supervision.
Any serious organization can only tolerate so much failure. MVA’s management and board have been failing the CNMI for years. Their failure has been expensive. Tens of millions of the public’s money spent on an operation that has promised and failed to deliver on effective tourism marketing.
Instead, MVA has been the tentagu for the politically connected hotels that have benefitted from direct government subsidies and free advertising, doling out corporate welfare just as anxiously as it has protected its sacred cow: salaries, off shore offices, and vacations.
The tone-deaf five-star vacations by MVA staff to resort destinations that will never become tourism source markets for the Marianas flies in the face of the everyday resident of Saipan, Tinian, and Rota who are struggling and suffering with the high cost of power bills, food, and the other costs of living. The audacity of these glorified government employees to wine and dine in luxury as the very people depending on their effort to bring economic activity through tourism watch MVA staff use public funds to become tourists in Malaysia, Australia, and the mainland United States.
As if their arrogance weren’t enough, MVA has the gall to bitch about the fiscal realities of a contracted budget pie that can only afford to allot nearly $3 million for their Fiscal Year 2025 operations. The board and management offer no solutions, despite their constant bragging about their business acumen. And hilariously, they warn that because the legislature refuses to cut funding to education, cops, and courts in order to give MVA the money they’re demanding, MVA will not be able to do its job in attracting tourists.
MVA ALREADY IS UNABLE TO DO ITS JOB IN ATTRACTING TOURISTS.
The public has spent tens of millions of dollars on MVA operations the past few years, and those 8-digit “investments” have not resulted in busloads of Korean and Japanese tourists headed to Garapan from the airport.
Obviously, MVA has failed. Obviously, MVA’s management is incompetent and incapable. Obviously, MVA’s board has to go.
They need to resign.
And if they don’t, then legislators and Governor Arnold Palacios: Do your jobs and get rid of the people and the offices that are failing the Commonwealth.
