Guam's tourism industry is facing an unprecedented crisis, as revealed by a report from two dozen stakeholders. While global travel rebounds, Guam still lags, with visitor arrivals from Japan and Korea far below pre-pandemic levels.

“We’re down more than 50% over 2019–unfortunately, that’s pretty unique in the world–global recovery is about 95% at this point,” said Mark Baldyga, former Guam Visitors Bureau Chairman.

Baldyga helped draft the initial tourism situation report, which was presented to GVB on Thursday.

So why can’t Guam rebound? The report points to what Baldyga calls “A perfect storm of challenges,” to name a few.

“We were closed longer than everybody else–let me say our source market was closed longer than everybody else was. We got hit by the typhoon as we started getting back on our feet, and we’re still suffering the effects of a very weak yen,” said Baldyga.

The report also notes major retail losses, fewer flights, and widespread business closures, straining surviving businesses and endangering long-term economic stability.

Still, Baldyga believes recovery is possible. It's why the report is coupled with a recovery plan–targeting first market share recovery in Japan and Korea.

It also outlines key initiatives like targeted marketing campaigns, signature events, capital improvements, and airline incentives, more specifically, landing fee reductions and cooperative marketing fees.

“Incentives could be in the form of a straight subsidy per flight–for new flights only. Or, it can be a fee for empty seats below a certain threshold–it helps give a little guarantee to the airlines so if they add a flight and its running at 40% load factor–we pick up the empty seats up to, let's say, 60-70% load factor,” he said.

Baldyga told KUAM, “Bottom line, we need to do better.”

Meantime, Governor Lou Leon Guerrero was also at the board meeting, Baldyga said the industry is thankful to the maga’haga for her support and advocacy.