HAGÅTÑA (The Guam Daily Post) — Guam on Tuesday welcomed its first tourist charter flight since March 2020 with 153 passengers from Taiwan, a milestone in the slow but anticipated steady reopening of the pandemic-devastated tourism industry, officials said.
Most of the passengers are here for vacation and Covid-19 vaccination. The vaccine is available only to those 12 years old or older.
The initial number of passengers, according to the A.B. Won Pat Guam International Airport Authority and Eva Air representatives on Guam, was 163, but the Guam Visitors Bureau on Tuesday night clarified that it’s 153 passengers. The number of airline crew members is excluded from this count, GVB said.
Minutes after Eva Air’s Airbus 321-200 touched down around 3 p.m., the first passenger to emerge raised his hand and waved to the waiting crowd of local tourism and airport officials.
Enthusiastic “Hafa Adai” and “welcome to Guam” greetings and live CHamoru music from the duo “Jesse and Ruby” welcomed the passengers.
“It’s monumental, very monumental that Air V&V caught on,” GVB President Carl Gutierrez said at the airport. “I know that they’re here now and we may not have to use the Air V&V protocol…but the packaging of the flights coming here used the Air V&V.”
The tourists from Taiwan are here not only to enjoy Guam’s natural beauty, but also to get Covid-19 vaccination, which is still being distributed at a slow pace in their country.
Many of the tourists, including children, were wearing white protective overalls with face shields and masks, indicative of the realities of traveling safely during a pandemic.
The Eva Air flight is the first direct flight from Taiwan in more than a year and a half, GVB said.
Gutierrez said this is just the first in a series of direct flights from Taiwan with a combined total of more than 2,000 passengers already booked for Guam from July through mid-August.
“This is wonderful news,” GVB Board Chairman Milton Morinaga said of the first batch of charter flight passengers from Taiwan since the start of the pandemic. “With this Air V&V, the word is out so a lot of people in Taiwan now know where Guam is, how close it is, so this will be a real start for all other airlines to start servicing us.”
Vaccine tourism on Guam, initially opened to American expats living in the Philippines, Thailand, Japan and other Asian countries, has also opened to foreign travelers after more travel restrictions have been lifted.
Besides fully vaccinated travelers, those with negative polymerase chain reaction test result within 72 hours of arrival could now also skip government quarantine on Guam, just like the newly arrived tourists from Taiwan.
“Lifting quarantine is very important aspect of Air V&V,” Morinaga said. “So basically without quarantine, they are here with less time and if they really want to stay longer, they can and we can service these people, second-day vaccination if we need to.”
The Taiwanese government frowns upon its citizens traveling on a package tour for medical reason, but Guam’s changed travel restrictions allowed for tourists to individually book their travel and make arrangements for their own vaccination, Gutierrez said.
Gutierrez said 49 of the passengers opted to get the single-dose Johnson & Johnson Janssen Covid-19 vaccine but most chose the two-dose Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine so they would be staying much longer.
‘Milestone’
GIAA Executive Manager John Quinata said the arrival of passengers from Taiwan is an “awesome accomplishment and milestone” for Guam.
“Our folks, our own island residents getting herd immunity was one of the big attractions for these folks to start coming to Guam because they know that they are coming to a safe destination,” Quinata said.
Guam targets 80% herd immunity against Covid-19 by the island’s 77th Liberation Day on July 21, and is now at about 76%. The goal is to get 80% or 96,031 of the estimated 120,039 adult population to be fully vaccinated then.
Quinata joined tourism and Guam Customs and Quarantine Agency officials who greeted the passengers. He said GIAA personnel worked with Eva Air staff in preparation for the arrival of the charter flight.
GVB also provided complimentary bottled water and hand sanitizer to passengers as they made their way from immigration to the Public Health checkpoint.
For Guam’s tourism industry, the arrival of the first large tourist group since March 2020 was a welcome sight.
While there have been regular flights from United Airlines that transported more passengers, mostly were returning residents and military personnel. Tuesday was the first time that a flight was full of tourists, officials said.
GVB said Tuesday’s charter is one of several flights coordinated by various Taiwan travel agencies, such as Lion Travel and Phoenix Tours.
South Koreans next
More than 2,000 tourists from Taiwan have so far booked their flights to Guam via charters, between now and mid-August, and hundreds more are expected after that, Gutierrez said.
With Taiwan travelers pumping up or getting Guam tourism started, Gutierrez said this gives “hope to our people.”
“Even people that own businesses down at Tumon and other areas, maybe they will see that there are actually people here and they start to open up their businesses,” Gutierrez said.
The federal government authorized more than $2 billion for Guam’s pandemic response and recovery.
Tourists from Korea are expected to also soon visit Guam again, Gutierrez said.
“After Taiwan, we’re going to go after Korea. Korea has a lot of vaccinated people. They can come in here,” Gutierrez said.
He said he also received an inquiry Monday night of people from South Korea who want to get their Covid-19 vaccination on Guam.
He later said that half of the passengers were out of the airport in less than an hour, thanks to what he described as “phenomenal” processing by Public Health and “superb” service from Customs.
The “only slight delay was the luggage coming to the carousel,” he said.
A chartered Eva Airline flight with 153 passengers from Taiwan arrived at the A.B. Won Pat International Airport on Tuesday afternoon. The tourists are here for the Guam Visitors Bureau’s vacation and Covid-19 vaccination program. Many wore protective gear when they got off the plane.
