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MVA exit survey eyed in Oct.
The Marianas Visitors Authority will be conducting an exit survey for tourists possibly next month, according to MVA deputy managing director Judy Torres.
Torres said the exit survey will be conducted among all major markets: Russia, China, Korea, Japan, United States, and Taiwan.
Market Research and Development has been contracted to conduct the survey.
“They have already conducted a pilot survey to test out results and they will also train the supervisors and enumerators to conduct the exit survey on exiting passengers at the airport,” Torres said.
The survey will provide MVA “qualitative information” on visitors. Torres said they have quantitative data on visitor arrivals but coming up with qualitative data needs more in-depth information.
“It will provide more information on what they did here on the CNMI such as their satisfaction ratings and expenditure information. With that, we will have data on the economic impact of tourism in the CNMI,” Torres said.
The last exit survey conducted was in 2011, which gave MVA the information needed to boost its projects in improving tourism in the CNMI.
The exit survey will also help MVA in terms of decision making in marketing and destination enhancement.
Torres said the contractors will be using tablet computers at the airport’s holding room and the questions will be online in different languages.
“The [respondents] will be randomly selected,” she said.
The targeted number is about 3,500 respondents.
According to Torres the reason they are doing the exit survey this year is because they have enough funding.
The surveys for 2012 and 2013 were not done due to limited funding.
“The survey is really important because tourism is our main source of income and getting the results from the tourists is necessary and important for stakeholders in the CNMI,” Torres said.
