Gutierrez
Håfa Adai! When you’re making up lost ground and need to rebuild momentum quickly after a setback, shortcuts and leapfrogs are great ways to make faster progress. And going with the obvious is often the promptest route to recovery.
Take a tip from our recovering visitor industry. These days, sports tourism is a “no brainer” for Destination Guam USA. Not only does it tie in well with the Asia-Pacific region’s collective gasp for fresh air following the pandemic, but our island’s sunny weather, serviceable infrastructures, and abundant recreational facilities can readily support such athletic endeavors.
As local hospitality businesses and specialty retailers retool and reopen, visiting athletes focus on training and competing and gladly connect with whichever service-oriented companies can meet their needs and entertain them during their downtime.
Go ride a bike!
Along these lines, this holiday season, the Guam Visitors Bureau will welcome three competitive lady cyclist-influencers from South Korea who will join the Guam Cycling Federation’s 16th Annual Tour of Guam on December 10th.
GVB thanks and praises GCF President Eric Tydingco and the entire federation for their deft planning and management of this scenic annual tour. Their upcoming event will go a long way in helping the bureau promote Guam’s fresh air and natural tropical beauty across the region.
And GVB will proudly give this year’s Tour of Guam an interactive media push. The cyclist-influencers from Korea are slated to compete among as many as 200 cyclists for a two-race event co-sponsored by GVB, GCF, Union Cycliste Internationale, Oceania Cycling Confederation, Lombard Health, Triple J Enterprises, Hertz Car Rental, Pacific Islands Club Guam, bikefix GUAM, Hornet Sports, Powerade, Quench, Michelob ULTRA, and Volt Sportswear.
Pedal pumpers can compete on the single-loop 42km short course or trek deeper south through the figure-eight 105km long course.
Racers should expect plenty of challenging hills in traversing up to 4,000 feet of elevation for a chance to win the coveted Guam National Road Cycling Champion award in male and female categories.
GVB Korea Marketing aims to promote the “Tour of Guam” sporting event, the island’s cycling environment and scenic routes, plus Destination Guam’s delicious dining, attractions, and entertainment.
Videos, photos, and text content covering their five-day visit will be delivered through the lens of our cyclers’ race participation and positive on-island engagements over the designated travel period as they share personal adventures with their online followers.
All three Korean lady cyclists visited Guam for the GVB 2023 Guam Sports Market Expert Fam Tour and Contents Production Project in March of this year and used that opportunity to get a feel for the roads on their bikes while introducing their combined 220,000 followers to Guam’s natural scenic wonders.
At that time, GVB hosted specialized groups focused on yoga/Pilates and scuba diving in addition to bicycling. Social media content generation and engagement from that familiarization tour revealed potent market demand for athletic pursuits in Guam and a cost effective way to reach health & fitness-oriented travelers.
These activities are part of GVB’s Sports Market Development Plan, which encompasses an October-November 2023 travel agent promotion wherein several agents developed Tour of Guam packages with special benefits in effort to garner even more positive exposure via social commerce channels and other media.
As of this writing, 57 Korean travelers had registered for the fast-approaching Tour of Guam and more Korean cyclists are expected to sign up among arrivals from other destinations.
Gears of redemption
Our tropical island destination has a way of bouncing back after local and regional disasters. Business sectors, governments, and overseas markets have a way of converging for a common cause and coming to the rescue with ready answers when the chips are down. It only goes to show that a strong support network spanning the region is worth its weight in gold.
Blind spots can be illumined and downtime can be cut short when we take the temperature of any given pool of undecided travelers and find the most effective remedies to get them here through informed hunches and the process of elimination.
Among Destination Guam’s primary tourist markets, South Korea has been the quickest to rebound from the worldwide COVID travel shutdown. Nowhere is that more evident than in GVB’s most recently published arrivals statistics showing South Korean arrivals reached nearly 300,000 from January through October of this year while Japanese arrivals were just under 100,000 and US/Hawaii arrivals were just over 70,000 for the same period.
South Korea’s “living with COVID” mantra and determination to open borders and encourage foreign travel earlier in the Asia-Pacific region’s pandemic recovery period likely amount to a few of the many reasons that Korean cyclers so far account for the highest number of inbound participants in this year’s Tour of Guam, falling second only to local cyclers within the population of registrants for this year’s event.
So, when the market shifts, we ask ourselves which tourists are ready to board the next flight and which ones need more time and information to make up their minds? What’s influencing any given traveler’s choices? What types of tourists are prepared to head for Guam within the next month? Where are they from and what do they want to do when they get here? What prevailing market conditions will reinforce and favor our strongest appeals? What thresholds must we cross to draw various key demographics into our diversified mix of arrivals?
These are the types of questions we at GVB are always asking ourselves in today’s tourism restoration environment.
Fortunately, after any calamity, reclamation of our island’s primary source markets remains squarely in the offing, because people naturally want to visit intriguing places that satiate their thirst for adventure and make them feel welcome and secure in curiously unique surroundings.
In other words, demand for safe, gratifying travel is generally so strong that the industry naturally rebounds after tough times like the recent typhoon and pandemic readjustment intervals that Guam has already gotten through the worst of.
For all the careful planning and promoting that destination management organizations do to recapture market share in times of turmoil, prioritizing certain attractions and events is a matter of what sticks and where and when. Timing is everything.
Right now, a growing number of voyagers are seeking serenity and wanting to reconnect with nature through the holistic experiences offered by wellness travel. Intercultural exchange and sports tourism are integral components of the trending wellness market. And these aspects play to Guam’s strengths as a warm, sunny, tropical environment with a hospitable, one-of-a-kind CHamoru heritage that thrives in the outdoors.
As the chips fall into place, the athletic adventure market is sticking, and GVB looks forward to building on the groundwork laid, the traction established, and the velocity generated by sports event planning organizations like the Guam Cycling Federation. Biba Guam! And long live the great outdoors!
