The Guam Visitors Bureau’s board of directors approved its $30.5 fiscal 2027 budget request at its March 27 board meeting.
The budget accounts for the bureau’s operations and working programs.
GVB estimated $34.9 million in projected fiscal 2027 Tourist Attraction Fund revenues. Priority expenditures for 2027 include $2.94 million in Hotel Occupancy Tax bond repayments and $20,500 for the TAF audit fee.
The Guam Visitors Bureau approved its fiscal 2027 budget request on March 27. Photo from Journal files
Marketing continues to make up the lion’s share of the budget, totaled at $13.3 million, a 6% increase from 2026 while destination development and administrative costs saw an 8% and 2% increase respectively.
Overall, it marks a 5% increase in the budget from last year.
GVB’s Financial Controller and Director of Finance & Administration Rudd Gudmalin presented the draft budget before the board and said the bureau adopted a new strategy for fiscal 2027 by “allocating the [marketing] budget based on forecasting outcomes and growth potentials.”
Guam’s two key markets, Korea and Japan, make up about 48.92% and 36.15% respectively of next fiscal year’s forecast market share, giving the markets roughly $5 million a piece in marketing budget. Meanwhile, Guam’s lesser markets, Taiwan and the Philippines, make up a combined 3.92% of the forecasted market share, giving an initial $500,000 and $750,000 respectively.
Marketing programs include familiarization tours, advertising campaigns, and travel agent promotions.
GVB board member and chairwoman of the Taiwan marketing committee Michelle Merfalen pushed for balance between the Philippines and Taiwan marketing budgets.
“Since [Taiwan] is a smaller market … we need to invest more in our market to retain them,” she said.
GVB board chairman George Chiu said the key question is flight frequency from Taiwan.
“If you have two flights and you’re at a 70% load factor right now, you have 12,000 people coming in from Taiwan; at 100% load factor you’re at 17,000. So the upside is 5000 people in one year,” he said.
Compared to the Philippines which operates 14 more flights, Chiu said, the upside is much more than 5000 people a year.
The board agreed on reducing the Philippine marketing budget by $75,000, about 10%, and reallocating the funding towards Taiwan.
President and CEO of GVB Régine Biscoe Lee said the bureau can monitor how things go with the proposed budget and can revisit it if things change.
Board members Ken Yanagisawa and Ho Eun raised concerns surrounding airline incentives for the Korean and Japanese markets. Eun said that the bureau may need help from the Guam Legislature to secure additional funding for the subsidies, but Lee is unsure of the senators’ appetite for it following past oversight hearings.
Regardless, the board and management agree that airline incentives are needed to keep travel coming at a time when it is becoming more costly for airlines to fly.
“We are in dire straits if we don’t have it,” Lee said.
For destination development, much of the budget was allocated towards sports and events, and culture and branding activities. However, visitor safety saw a 15% decrease in funding for the next fiscal year.
GVB board member and former senator Joanne Brown questioned the decrease.
Gudmalin said the decrease stemmed amidst a contract renegotiation last fiscal year and the bureau was unsure what the true contract would be.
“The 2027 amounts, now, for the actual cost. We were able to reduce the contract cost while still keeping, or even increasing the level of activities for our [visitor safety] officers,” he said.
The lower cost and maintained coverage also comes with expansion, Gudmalin added. This includes the addition of two beach safety officers, essentially lifeguards, to GVB’s VSO program.
GVB intends to launch an invitation for bid next fiscal year for beach cleaning contracts, signaling a shift towards in-house road maintenance and island beautification efforts.mbj
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