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MVA renews AVIAREPS contract for another 2 years
The Marianas Visitors Authority is renewing its contract with AVIAREPS Marketing Garden for another two years. AVIAREPS manages the MVA’s marketing efforts in Japan, Korea, and other tourist markets of the CNMI.
In an interview with Saipan Tribune yesterday, MVA managing director Perry Tenorio said they wanted to exercise their contractual option to renew the AVIAREPS contract for another two years, from Oct. 1, 2014, to Sept. 30, 2016.
Tenorio said that MVA is allowed to spend a maximum of $7.2 million on the AVIAREPS contract but the MVA board decided to limit the first half of fiscal year 2015 to only $3 million.
Tenorio said that the $7.2 million is just the ceiling that allows MVA to fund their offshore offices. The ceiling in previous years was $5 million until it was increased last year.
“This is to see what kind of collection we get to determine by how much the second half will be. It is just to focus the first half of fiscal year 2015 until we can make our recommendation to the board,” Tenorio said.
He said the change order between MVA and AVIAREPS allows them to continue their partnership for two more years but everything is still subject to availability of its offshore accounts resources.
The offshore offices are extensions of MVA in Russia, China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan.
AVIAREPS has been under contract with MVA since the late 1990s, according to Tenorio.
“Obviously there is an increased demand for the CNMI and we want to make sure that we maintain our offshore accounts,” he said.
After the AVIAREPS contract is over in September 2016, MVA will be required to re-bid the management of the offshore accounts.
Recently the Senate decided to zero out MVA’s appropriation and transfer $1.61 million to the Public School System. That has prompted the MVA board to be cautious in releasing funds to manage its offshore accounts.
“We have to scale back a little. Obviously advertisement can be seen in two different ways. One is promoting through our offshore accounts and the other one is reinvesting in the CNMI travel product and the board wants to improve destination enhancement,” Tenorio said.
