HAGÅTÑA (The Guam Daily Post) — Giving away incentives such as free staycation packages could further drive up Covid-19 vaccination, while prolonged unemployment payments may now also be hurting Guam’s chances of getting more workers back on the job.
These were among key points that Pacific Islands Club general manager Ben Ferguson raised on what it takes to get Guam’s tourism back on track, during the Rotary Club of Guam’s meeting on Thursday.
Ferguson is senior managing director for the PHR group of hotels that include Hilton Guam Resort & Spa, Hotel Nikko Guam, Hyatt Regency Guam, Sheraton Laguna Guam Resort, and Tsubaki Tower, and is also the vice chairman of the governor’s Reopening Task Force.
As guest speaker at the Rotary Club of Guam meeting, Ferguson recommend that Guam adopt Hawaii’s travel policies by easing post-travel quarantine to start seeing visitor arrivals.
“This is by no means questioning the decision-making process as it relates to quarantine protocols or anything like that,” he said, but to now start the right conversations to get the tourism economy moving forward.
$1M prize to get vaccinated
Guam, he said, may also well consider following other states’ lead in offering incentives for people to get Covid-19 vaccination because the island’s immunization rate is slowing down before reaching an 80% herd immunity that could signal economic recovery.
Other states such as Ohio, for example, announced a $1 million raffle prize for five lucky vaccinated adults, while other states offer college scholarship, he said.
“Hopefully we’ll see some of those creative approaches taking place here,” Ferguson told Rotary Club of Guam members and guests at their lunch meeting at Three Squares Guam restaurant in Tamuning.
‘Frustrating’
Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, he said, has tremendously helped workers displaced by the pandemic, considering that Guam has 19% unemployment based on government data, but there’s also an unexpected downside.
“Our collective efforts here are meant to try and get our employees back and somewhat frustrating also for some in the industry is when we do have opening, sometimes it’s challenging to find employees due to the PUA issue,” he said. “Again, I’m not here to speak negatively about PUA. It’s been very very important for our community and it sustained us for a period of time.”
Other employers have also expressed concern with the lack of employees wanting to apply for positions that have been opening up.
But Ferguson said there’s light at the end of the tunnel, and that light is being provided by the Covid-19 vaccination.
Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero said the goal is to reach 80% herd immunity by July 21, when at least 109,081 of Guam’s population is fully vaccinated. More than 73,000 have been fully vaccinated as of this week.
It’s “shocking” to learn, Ferguson said, that quite a percentage of people surveyed by the media still think that tourism shouldn’t reopen at this point, even when the island’s vaccination is a lot better than many other places and its Covid-19 situation has dramatically improved.
“We all agree, (PUA) has been good to support those individuals who are in need but at the end of the day, that’s not going to last forever,” Ferguson said. “We do need to get our people working again.”
PUA will cover unemployment up to Sept. 4.
He recalled that at the beginning of the pandemic, the community was talking about an expected increase in crimes because of unemployment, but that didn’t happen because of PUA.
While PUA is ending, jobs have reopened although not at the rate that everyone is expecting. Pacific Islands Club and other hotels have been looking forward to increasing their occupancy but they also understand that it won’t happen overnight, he said.
PIC, for example, had an average annual hotel occupancy of 90% in 2019. Now, it would be happy to have at least 10% to 15% occupancy by the end of the year, Ferguson said.
Prior to the pandemic, PIC had about 700 employees. Now it has 150 to 200 workers, depending on how busy the hotel is. Others remained furloughed and there were also permanent job losses, just like other hotels, he said.
Ferguson said Hawaii is an example of how tourism recovery could be slow.
Hawaii relaxed its quarantine protocol for incoming visitors and instead adopted a negative PCR testing requirement three days prior to travel.
“Since that time, they welcomed roughly 5,000 Japanese or roughly 1,000 per month (since November), and maybe just a thousand visitors from Korea,” he said. “So you see even with the relaxation of quarantine protocols, still very few traveled from those two destinations. Those are our main sources.”
Vaccine rollout in Japan and Korea remain slow at this point, he said.
Ferguson hopes that Guam’s planned program to entice American expats and others to vacation on Guam while also getting vaccinated here will really take off, but he said that could depend on the relaxing of quarantine protocols.
Pacific Islands Club general manager Ben Ferguson, who’s also senior managing director for the PHR group of hotels on Guam, gestures as he talks about getting the island’s tourism moving again at the Rotary Club of Guam meeting on Thursday, May 20, 2021, at Three Squares Guam restaurant in Tamuning.
Photo by Haidee Eugenio Gilbert/The Guam Daily Post
