By Gerardo R. Partido
Variety News Staff

ALTHOUGH the Golden Week holiday season for Guam was expected to be flat, Japan Airlines has reported a slight increase in visitor traffic to the island.
Guam faced a lot of competition during the Golden Week holiday travel demand from April 27 to May 6, particularly in China, which has been stepping up its promotional efforts in line with next year’s Beijing Olympics.
But JAL reported an 11 percent increase in bookings to Guam during the Golden Week holiday period.
JAL transported 15,494 passengers to Guam during the Golden Week period, the airline said in its latest passenger traffic report.
Overall, the number of passengers traveling on JAL Group airlines was up by 1.6 percent over the same period last year.
But during the 10-day period involving a combination of public holidays and weekends, the number of passengers traveling on international routes operated by JAL and its subsidiaries — Japan Asia Airways and JALways — dropped 1 percent over the same period last year.
As expected, Guam faced strong competition from China and South Korea. JAL passenger bookings were up by 11.3 percent on routes serving China and 17.7 percent for routes serving South Korea.
Guam also faced a lot of competition from domestic Japanese destinations as the number of passengers traveling on JAL Japan domestic routes during Golden Week totaled 1,263,108, an increase of 2.3 percent over the same vacation period last year.
Demand was particularly high on flights serving Hokkaido, southwest Honshu, Shikoku and the Okinawa Islands.
To meet the demand, the JAL Group operated an additional 24 flights on domestic Japan routes to accommodate increased demand for travel to Okinawa as well as Sapporo.
Japan domestic routes seat load factor was 67 percent, up 3.3 points when compared to the same period last year.