Brian Shin is 2021 Business Person of the Year

Brian Shin, chief executive officer of the Global Hotel Division of E-Land Group, shows the Saipan Chamber of Commerce’s 2021 Business Person of the Year award he got last Saturday. (Joshua Santos)

Brian Shin, who is chief executive officer of the Global Hotel Division of E-Land Group, is the Saipan Chamber of Commerce’s 2021 Business Person of the Year. Shin received the award during SCC’s “Business Person of the Year Annual Gala” last Saturday at Kensington Hotel Saipan’s Kensington Hall.

Shin, who was chosen to receive the award by its previous winners, was among six nominees in all, which included AB Risk Solutions operations manager Shayne Villanueva, 500 Sails cofounder and career nonprofit finance professional Emma Perez, Bank of Saipan CEO and president John Arroyo, Bridge Capital LLC general manager and vice president Bart Jackson, and TurnKey Solutions business co-owner Billy Grow.

The announcement of the selection of the 2021 Business Person of the Year was the highlight of the “Cloaks & Tiaras” gala that also saw the installation of the SCC’s new officers and board members. The event also served as the SCC’s largest annual fundraiser for SCC initiatives.

In a later interview, Shin credits the entire E-Land for the award. “[It’s] not just me. …Our company as E-Land never stopped improving or developing our products into better [ones],” he said.

As proof of that, Shin noted that the Kensington Hall where the gala was held was only built last year, while a sister-company, the Coral Ocean Resort Golf Course, reopened last year after an over two-year reconstruction period following damage caused by Super Typhoon Yutu. “We never stopped investing and getting ready for our tourists coming back,” said Shin.

E-Land operates three hotel properties in the CNMI: Kensington Hotel Saipan, Pacific Islands Club Saipan, and Coral Ocean Resort, with more than 500 employees.

Shin said that E-Land played “a fair amount of role” in making the South Korea-CNMI travel bubble program possible, with Kensington Hotel Saipan serving as a hybrid-quarantine hotel and Pacific Islands Club Saipan eventually becoming a hybrid-quarantine hotel as well.

“Our company is trying to do different things under the circumstances to boost tourism as well as protecting the community from [COVID-19],” he said.

Shin added that E-Land continues to be a part of the CNMI’s ongoing efforts to keep the community safe from COVID-19 through running a quarantine facility, an initiative Shin said “is still ongoing.”

When asked what he and E-Land would like to see in the near future, Shin simply said: More tourists. “That’s pretty much what we’re hoping, not just our company but everyone in the CNMI, is hoping to have tourism back. As long as we’re doing what we’re doing and promoting [the CNMI] as a safe destination…I think we’re in good shape,” he said.

According to a BPOY nominee bio prepared by SCC, Shin came to Saipan in March 2020 as CEO of the Global Hotel Division. In this role, Shin oversaw the decision to operate PIC as a designated quarantine site in collaboration with the CNMI government, presented the initial framework of a Korean market “travel bubble” to the Marianas Visitors Authority in December 2020, the reopening of COR in January 2021, and several other achievements since then.