By Jolene Toves
For Variety
HAGÅTÑA (The Guam Daily Post) — April 2026 visitor arrivals totaled 36,818, down 28% when compared to the same period last year. Though the Guam Visitors Bureau reported an increase in marketing costs, GVB director of tourism research Christian Valencia noted the largest declines in arrivals were concentrated in Korea and Japan, Guam’s two main source markets.
Valencia tied the decline in arrivals to “the passage of Super Typhoon Sinlaku and some regional travel softness. The month is also impacted by higher jet fuel surcharges and some reduction in airline seat supply.”
From a calendar year perspective, from January through April 30, visitor arrivals totaled 244,174, which, according to Valencia, represents a modest 1% increase.
“A little flat over the same period last year. Japan continued to be the primary growth driver so far for the calendar year with double-digit gains here, you can see 11.4%, while Korea remains our largest source market so far,” Valencia said.
From a fiscal year-to-date perspective, GVB reported 473,146 total visitor arrivals from October to April.
“That’s reflecting a strong overall growth of 13.5%. We’re really buoyed by our great progress in the first quarter of the fiscal year. Growth was led by continued strength in Korea and Japan, with the double digits there,” Valencia reported.
With these numbers, GVB said their focus will be on “continuing this growth trajectory in the coming months.”
The decline in the two source markets raised questions about the factors contributing to the declines, specifically seat capacity.
“We’ve lost seats, so in what markets did we lose seats,” GVB board member Mayor Robert Hoffman asked. “Because it’s shocking to see it goes from X amount to X amount…but not knowing there’s not much seats anymore on that one.”
Nadine Cepeda, GVB global marketing director, confirmed that seat capacity for Korea has reduced.
“You remember at the end of last year, they kind of bumped some seats on us, and then they pulled that back. Then you had the typhoon, (and) then you had the fuel surcharge. So, a lot of low-cost carriers are actually reducing their flights,” Cepeda said.
“The low-cost carriers are the ones that are most impacted by just changes in jet fuel. They’re the ones that have the most price sensitivity. So, they’re the ones that were the first to kind of announce the suspensions for the month of April. But it sounds like they may be coming back for July. We are having (a) conversation with them and trying to see if we can get them to bring it back sooner because of the ease in jet fuel prices,” GVB President and CEO Regine Biscoe Lee added.
She said that GVB will be focusing on that effort over the next few weeks.
Lee, however, asked board members to keep in mind that Super Typhoon Sinlaku resulted in grounded flights, which directly contributed to “thousands of people” not being able to complete their travel.
The visitor profile
GVB collected data to develop a visitor profile for South Korea and Japan. While the data is pulled from the exit surveys, Valencia noted that the findings are based on a “lower than normal sample size.”
“Due to some operational challenges due to Super Typhoon Sinlaku. We usually get 400 plus for sample sizes; for South Korea, we have 139. That’s a margin of error (of) about plus or minus 8% on a 95% confidence level,” Valencia said.
The data collected, however, did point toward a continued visitor profile trend.
“Our Korean visitors, they continue to be largely family-oriented with an average party size of three and (an) average stay of four nights. They remain digitally savvy, with social media as one of their top travel inspiration sources, and snorkeling, shopping, and dining continued to top their activities that we’ve been seeing the past few months,” Valencia said. “Overall satisfaction is still pretty good at eight out of 10. There’s room for improvement there, but again, always topping the scores is the hospitality and the warmth of our people, the Håfa Adai spirit, that local friendliness.”
For Japan, the exit survey sample size was 266 with roughly a 6% margin of error.
“Our Japan market continues to skew slightly younger there. The age box is skewing slightly towards the younger visitors, with strong participation between our 18- to 49-year-olds. Shopping, beach, and dining remain their top three activities, and again, they’re also pretty digitally savvy, using social media and online travel platforms to do all their travel planning and destination discovery,” Valencia said.
Marketing costs
Rudd Gudmalin, GVB’s chief financial officer, reported total revenues from various funding sources, including government of Guam appropriations, the Airline Incentive Fund, Ko’ko’ race fees, and the Tumon Night Market, are up 65% as of April 30, 2026, while also mentioning an increase in marketing expenses.
“We continue to track well with our marketing expenses. Korea and Japan have 4.1 million and 2.5 million, respectively, and overall expenses for marketing are up 25% compared to the same period last year,” Gudmalin said.
According to the GVB report, marketing expenses fiscal year-to-date as of April 30, 2026, totaled $7,589,301 as compared to the same period last year, which totaled $6,071,731.
Marketing efforts in Korea ran the highest at $4,166,120. This represents a 49% increase, or roughly $1.4 million more than April 2025 fiscal year-to-date expenses.
For Japan, GVB spent $2,570,931 in fiscal 2026 as of April 30, a 28% increase in costs when compared to the $2,011,695 spent in April 2025.
The data presented showed that percentage-wise, the Philippines market was the second highest at 41%, or $264,922 spent for April 2026 Y-T-D expenditures, as compared to $187,940 for the same period last year.
The data also show decreases in marketing expense categories to include social media, global website, North America source market, and new market development.
