Tenorio: Cultivate CNMI tourism

After 21 years of service to the tourism industry, Marianas Visitors Authority managing director Perry Tenorio will be leaving his position on March 25. (Frauleine Villanueva-Dizon)

After more than two decades of service to the CNMI’s tourism industry, managing director Perry Tenorio will leave the Marianas Visitors Authority on March.

Having been able to serve the industry for 21 years, Tenorio said he was proud to be part of the team who convinced the federal government about the CNMI’s need for visa waiver programs for the Chinese and Russian travelers.

“I was very proud to be part of that process, when the CNMI was federalized from our own immigration system to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. When they had introduced the draft Guam-CNMI visa waiver program, they had planned China and Russia was excluded from that. And one thing that the MVA did, in collaboration with the board directors and the industry people, was we argued the economic importance of Chinese and Russians to the CNMI. And as a result, we are still enjoying that parole authority,” Tenorio said.

Tenorio also experienced the worst of times for the CNMI’s tourism industry which is now bouncing back.

“During the period that I came in, we were right around our lowest period in terms of the travel industry. I’m very glad that we’re able to see increase in hotel occupancy, and increase in average room rates. Also very proud to be part of that,” Tenorio said.

For Tenorio, the CNMI should further cultivate tourism on the islands.

“We had other industries on island but this is the one that still remains. I think it’s something that the CNMI should consider cultivating because it’s a clean industry,” Tenorio said.

To do this, Tenorio said two things must be done, to promote to people to come here and prepare facilities that will cater to the tourists.

“The local part would be enhancing our destination, which MVA continues to do,” Tenorio said.

Tenorio said MVA values the balanced distribution of visitors from the various markets in Asia such as the Japanese, Koreans, and Chinese and that they are working on revive visitors from Japan as well as looking at other possible markets.

“Diversification is very healthy for the industry,” Tenorio said, “Russia is always at the back of our minds. Unfortunately, the devaluation of the Russian ruble has made it very expensive for Russians to travel to dollar-based destinations like the CNMI.”

“What we’re hoping to also expand to would be Taiwan. We’d like to see more Taiwanese visitors to come to the CNMI,” he added.

Tenorio also noted that there are opportunities of bringing in tourists from European countries.

“Definitely we have some opportunity of linking them to the CNMI, maybe via Philippines with PAL Express, but that’s something that we need to look at. It would have to be almost a two-country destination,” Tenorio said.

While he will be leaving MVA on March 25, Tenorio hopes that the tourism industry as well as its partners will be prepared for the upcoming developments in the commonwealth.

“We see a lot of opportunities coming up. We see increase developments of hotels. We have Kensington that will be opening in June. We also have Honest Profit and Grand Mariana. What we need to do is prepare for it,” Tenorio said.

“We need to have dialogues with the [Commonwealth] Ports Authority to make sure that our facilities are able, the airport is able to handle more flights. Although we are seeing more trends of the larger wide-body planes coming in, I think eventually the right fit for the CNMI is narrow-body. If we have narrow-body planes, then we will have more frequency,” he added.