By By Haidee Eugenio Gilbert and Uriah Aguon Pacific Daily News

Copyright guampdn

Arrivals to Guam during the first 10 months of fiscal year 2025 remain at only 44% of what they were prior to the pandemic, even as the tourism agency’s annual budget is at record high $29 million.

Guam saw 589,832 arrivals from October to July, versus more than 1.33 million during the same months in pre-COVID fiscal 2019, based on latest data from the Guam Visitors Bureau.

Senators approved $10 million of GVB’s $11.1 million additional funding request for airline incentives that the bureau said will help boost tourist arrivals to Guam.

At the rate monthly arrivals are going, Guam could end up with just a little over 700,000 arrivals for the entire fiscal 2025, which could even be lower than the over 753,000 in fiscal 2024. The current fiscal year ends Sept. 30.

On Tuesday, GVB released a report stating that the tourism economy generated $1.4 billion in direct, indirect, and induced impacts for Guam in 2024.

In 2019, a similar report stated that the total economic impact of tourism on Guam was $2.4 billion.

While Guam’s tourism recovery from the pandemic remains among the slowest in the world for a host of factors, massive investments from the military and other federal program funds have been keeping the Guam economy strong.

GVB has said that Guam experienced a “perfect storm” that led to slow tourism recovery just when arrivals were starting to pick up from the impacts of the pandemic. They included Typhoon Mawar in 2023, delayed Japan and Korean travel post-COVID, weakened yen and won, a carrier accident, and fierce competition from other markets.

Here are approved fiscal year appropriations for GVB and arrival numbers in recent years:

2018: $23.835M; 1.5 million arrivals2019: $22.335M; 1.6 million arrivals2020: $22.490M; 757,385 arrivals2021: $6.398M; 61,607 arrivals2022: $14.528M; 216,915 arrivals2023: $18.933M; 602,594 arrivals2024: $23.44M; 753,316 arrivals2025: $28.97M; forecast of 762,949 to 1,008,430 arrivals2026: $28.92M (budget bill); forecast of 671,302 to 840,642

2024 economic impact

The newly released 2024 Tourism Economic Impact Report stated that the tourism economy generated $1.4 billion in total impacts for Guam in 2024 as a result of 793,000 visitors spending $1.1 billion directly in tourism-related industries, which also generated additional supply chain sales of $100 million and household income of $200 million.

The report is available at guamvisitorsbureau.com/research/studies/guam-tourism-satellite-account.

The report was prepared by Tourism Economics, an Oxford Economics company.

It’s the same firm that prepared the 2019 report showing tourism’s total impact of $2.4 billion that year, with $1.8 billion spending by travelers.

The annual report provides a comprehensive analysis of tourism’s direct, indirect, and induced impacts across various sectors of the island’s economy, highlighting the economic contributions of the tourism industry to Guam.

Visitor spending reached some $1.1 billion, including those for accommodation, transportation, retail, food and beverage, and recreational activities in 2024, the report said.

Tourism-related activities in the form of visitor spending, government support, and industry capital expenditures, contributed a total of $936 million to Guam’s gross domestic product, GDP, affirming tourism’s indispensable role in Guam’s economy, it said.

The report also said that tourism demand generated $310 million in direct personal income in 2024.

Including indirect and induced impacts, employees received a total of $393 million in personal income. This is the equivalent of nearly $9,000 per household on Guam, on average.

The latest report said the tourism sector directly and indirectly supported 14,400 jobs on Guam, from hospitality and aviation to retail and cultural services. These include 6,000 jobs in the hotel or lodging industry.

The tourism economy generated a total of $151.3 million in tax revenues for the government of Guam in 2024, which are critical for funding public services and infrastructure projects, the report said.

“Each household in Guam would need to be taxed an additional $3,444 to replace the visitor-generated taxes received by local government in 2024,” the report said.

GVB General Manager Régine Biscoe Lee, in a statement, said these findings reaffirm what has always been known: “that a strong tourism industry lifts all boats.”

“We are committed to continuing tourism’s success and fostering growth that benefits all who call Guam home,” she said.

GVB said the comprehensive data presented in this study will serve as a crucial resource for policymakers, tourism stakeholders, and businesses in developing future strategies to enhance Guam’s competitiveness as a premier tourist destination.

The findings emphasize the need for continued investment in tourism infrastructure, marketing initiatives, and workforce development to ensure the long-term prosperity of the industry and the island.