What started out as a $388,000 pandemic-era tourism recovery plan has grown to a $1.16 million study to reposition Guam’s visitor industry, as arrivals remain below half of pre-COVID year levels.
The tourism plan’s completion has been delayed for at least two years, starting from the initial target of 2022, over bureaucratic and technical processes, funding issues, Typhoon Mawar, and the need to update old data.
But it’s now close to the finish line, as the final report on Guam’s tourism recovery plan for GovGuam is expected to be released in January 2025, according to Bureau of Statistics and Plans Director Lola Leon Guerrero.
Using $390,000 in federal funds awarded in fiscal 2020, BSP issued a bid and then awarded a $388,000 contract to New York-based hospitality consulting firm PKF hotelexperts LLC in 2021. BSP is administering the federal grant.
But it took a while for the contract to clear review from the Office of the Attorney General, which signed off on it in May 2022.
Leon Guerrero said there have been four contract extensions since then.
The latest extension was from Oct. 1, 2024 to March 31, 2025, to update the draft Guam Tourism Recovery Plan, she said.
The draft was released in May, and the final one is expected by early 2025.
“There is a need to update the draft Guam Tourism Recovery Plan with current information to better inform the current state of Guam’s tourism and for use in guiding future strategic investments aimed at revitalizing Guam’s economy and to include the government of Guam’s ongoing initiatives that were not captured in the plan,” Leon Guerrero told the Pacific Daily News.
Guam’s tourism industry suffered a major blow from the pandemic and its travel restrictions.
While COVID restrictions have long been lifted, arrivals to Guam during the first 11 months of fiscal 2024 reached 701,484 — still 47% of pre-pandemic fiscal 2019 levels.
This is based on the latest data from the Guam Visitors Bureau. As of this writing, GVB has yet to release its full fiscal 2024 arrivals covering Oct. 1, 2023 to Sept. 30, 2024.
GVB initially projected 900,000 to 1 million arrivals by fiscal 2024, but it acknowledged those initial forecasts had been stymied, citing Guam’s uncompetitive pricing, among other things.
Years prior to COVID, arrivals to Guam were already surpassing 1 million a year until it peaked at 1.6 million in fiscal 2019, only to hit a staggeringly low 61,607 arrivals in fiscal 2021. Numbers have since grown but still half of pre-COVID levels.
Tourism industry leaders and GovGuam officials have since called for a tourism recovery plan, and the need to rethink, reimagine and reposition the island’s visitor industry post-pandemic.
And that’s what the Guam BSP started working on, early in the pandemic.
Contract amount now $1.163M
BSP initially requested $3.9 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration but was awarded only $390,000.
A change order increased the initial $388,000 contract with PKF to $1,163,996, Leon Guerrero said.
That’s because of the need to update the plan with more current data and to fund the in-depth analysis of market trends, demographics and analytics for each project phase of the Guam recovery plan expansion, or tourism repositioning study, the BSP director said.
Leon Guerrero later said BSP received additional funding from the EDA, so the bureau was able to propose a change order for an in-depth analysis of the state of Guam’s tourism and what it could do to improve its position.
More delays
Even the change order faced a snag.
BSP and PKF signed the change order on Oct. 4, 2023 and transmitted it to the AG’s office on July 17, 2023, Leon Guerrero said.
It got caught in the controversy over the AG’s duties and responsibilities that reached the court, and the AG signed off on it nine months later — on March 25 this year.
At the time, the AG stamped the change order, “Approved: Not representing any Public Official.”
Four months later, on July 23, that stamp was removed.
(Next: What the draft tourism recovery report says.)
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