In the year 2010 they had more than 36.03 million visitors and had very healthy double digit increases.
The largest group came in from mainland China and on the average spent $7,050 per visitor. More than 60 percent of the total visitors came in from the mainland.
I would like to know how many tourists we have had from China over the last few years. A friend of mine and myself tried very hard a few years back to bring in Chinese and somehow it never seemed attractive enough for them to come here.
We have always known them to be spenders but Guam never seemed to know what they were looking for.
The total expenditures for the year 2010 surpassed $210 billion which is a new record for Hong Kong. We have been talking on Guam as if there is a worldwide recession and the tourist numbers have not increased because world travel is decreasing.
I think it is time we started to look at what it is our experts see and check out by other standards what it is they say and whether they are telling us the truth or not.
Guam has been stuck between 1 and 1.3 million tourists/visitors per year for the last 14 years. We are doing the same things and no one seems to give a hoot at the low performance. I think that after such a long time we ought to change the ones doing our promotions and change who we have as our marketing people.
I think we can and should do better than we have.
FELIX AGUON
Quezon City and Guam
for a while longer
