Published on : Tuesday, July 31, 2018
As managing director of P.H.R. Ken Micronesia Inc. and GVB’s board chairman, I am keen to help people understand the fragility of tourisms. One wrong situation can have a ripple impact that influence everything a destination works hard to maintain.
Guam is not the way it was 10 years back with more Japanese travelers and less competition. Low-cost aircrafts have been introduced into our markets, providing people variety of options at reasonable prices for other destinations. With rising competition, we have to be even more pioneering to keep the interest in Guam going.
Time to time, many people have asked me how is Guam’s state of tourism? I normally tell them that after attaining the best fiscal year in tourism history with 1.56 million visitors, we’ve spent fiscal year 2018 in a state of recovery.
At the start of fiscal 2018, North Korea news influenced us greatly which led to a loss of seats to Guam from different airlines. The Japan visitor market was impacted the hardest.
Nevertheless, GVB and our industry friends are working hand in hand with current and potential airlines to make more seats available. Part of the work we do comes from developing air service efforts to attract airlines and travel agents to make routes available or increase flight frequency.