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Better beaches than Florida and cheaper than Hawaii, how do people not know about this island? Might have to save up money to move here someday, it's literally paradise and hardly anyone knows about it
Guam is pretty but it has plenty of problems. One being that it's too far from the continental U.S. and expensive to get to and back. One of my coworkers was from Guam and it took her two days and over $2k to get over here. Hell nah.
Guam is pretty but it has plenty of problems. One being that it's too far from the continental U.S. and expensive to get to and back. One of my coworkers was from Guam and it took her two days and over $2k to get over here. Hell nah.
Yeah I've been researching and it seems difficult to set roots there if you don't have any connections, a shame really since it looks way nicer than Hawaii
The problem with Guam is that it is too faraway from mainland USA. From New York we are talking about on the other side of the planet.
If you are looking for better beaches than Hawaii, you can find that in the Caribbean. From New York that's a 3 - 4 hours flight depending on the island, but just flying to California takes about 5 hours and you are not even close to Guam yet. Too far.
If you are looking for similar sceneries as in Oahu (Hawaii), I have found similar and even better scenery in the Dominican Republic (though these places tend to not be tourist hotspots.) Very close to New York vs Guam. The DR is on a large island, so how scenic it will be to you depends on where you go. There are islands such as St Lucia that are small enough that practically everyone that visits will associate the island with being very scenic and that too is closer to New York than Guam.
Due to distance, Guam is one of those places you might visit once in a lifetime, but visiting the Caribbean on a yearly basis not only is doable, but many people are doing it. Plus, Guam is tiny. If you go to Puerto Rico or Jamaica, you already are in much larger islands to the point you forget they are islands.
I love Guam and appreciate the fact that the military has granted me to the opportunity to spend a few weeks there over the years in pretty nice hotels when on work trips.
As mentioned, the beaches are excellent (I actually prefer the water scene on Guam to Hawaii), it's less crowded than places like Hawaii, and I've found pretty good culinary options there.
But it's super far from other areas in the US (even from Hawaii, it's a trek, and longer than some want to travel), and expensive to get to. You're not getting a round trip ticket from Hawaii to Guam for less than $2,000, whereas I'm finding a "low" fare from NYC to Guam for over $1,700. Those are major downsides to visiting Guam.
Yeah it's easy to forget how far away it is. It's in fact closer to Bangkok than it is to Honolulu, and it is closer to Kabul than Los Angeles. It's more Asia-adjacent than North America-adjacent by a long shot even though of course it is really quite remote in the middle of the ocean, but I figure it's actually a more realistic tourism destination for Chinese and Japanese than for Americans. If you're on the East Coast, not only is the Caribbean right on your doorstep, it'd actually be a much easier trip to South America, Southern Europe and North Africa as well.
It also seems to get hit by significant typhoons on a fairly regular basis which would discourage investment as well. Building and rebuilding can't be cheap there given that I imagine a significant amount of things would need to be flown in.
Yeah it's easy to forget how far away it is. It's in fact closer to Bangkok than it is to Honolulu, and it is closer to Kabul than Los Angeles. It's more Asia-adjacent than North America-adjacent by a long shot even though of course it is really quite remote in the middle of the ocean, but I figure it's actually a more realistic tourism destination for Chinese and Japanese than for Americans. If you're on the East Coast, not only is the Caribbean right on your doorstep, it'd actually be a much easier trip to South America, Southern Europe and North Africa as well.
It also seems to get hit by significant typhoons on a fairly regular basis which would discourage investment as well. Building and rebuilding can't be cheap there given that I imagine a significant amount of things would need to be flown in.
On the Chinese tourist point, roundtrip from Beijing to Guam is literally more than half the price of Beijing to Honolulu or Beijing to Los Angeles or NYC. Probably the same for Japan.
Pre-COVID, Japanese tourists accounted for more than 70% of tourists traveling to Guam also: https://guam.stripes.com/community-n...ers-flock-guam Like the case with China, travel from Japan to Guam is much cheaper than to a U.S. state. And the flight time is significantly shorter.
And good point about being on the east coast. Folks looking for warm destinations to travel to would have a much easier time (in terms of travel time and money) traveling to the Caribbean, etc., than trying to visit Hawaii as an example.
Typhoons are unfortunately a major part of life in that part of the world; a little further to the west, but one had just passed over Taiwan prior to our last visit there. Still, there seems to be a fair amount of development on Guam. Housing on Guam is significantly cheaper than it is in most of Hawaii, though, for comparison purposes, probably due to the shorter distance companies have to ship/sail goods to Guam compared to Hawaii.
As a US territory, I have often wondered why the United States does not promote Guam (and Puerto Rico as well) more than it does. It looks like some of the big luxury hotel chains such as Hilton, Hyatt, Four Seasons, W, etc, would buy properties in Guam and set up shops and turn Guam into a popular tourist destination. As far as distance goes, when you're talking large numbers of miles, 7200 miles to Guam (from Austin) is not all that much further than 3700 miles to Honolulu (from Austin). And it's closer than Sydney, Australia (8400 miles from Austin) and large numbers of people fly back and forth between the United States and Australia every day of the year, so I'm not buying the "Guam is too far" side of argument.
As a US territory, I have often wondered why the United States does not promote Guam (and Puerto Rico as well) more than it does. It looks like some of the big luxury hotel chains such as Hilton, Hyatt, Four Seasons, W, etc, would buy properties in Guam and set up shops and turn Guam into a popular tourist destination. As far as distance goes, when you're talking large numbers of miles, 7200 miles to Guam (from Austin) is not all that much further than 3700 miles to Honolulu (from Austin). And it's closer than Sydney, Australia (8400 miles from Austin) and large numbers of people fly back and forth between the United States and Australia every day of the year, so I'm not buying the "Guam is too far" side of argument.
The number one reason people visit Australia is to visit friends and/or family. A tourist industry normally requires people to visit a place for leasure to maintain itself. Actual amount of tourist trips to Australia is just 1.5 million. Plus, total number of trips from the USA amounted to 522,000 and that includes all reasons, not just tourism. (https://www.tra.gov.au/en/internatio...illion%20trips.)
Quite frankly, that is not a lot compared to (2022; using data where they are split by nationality):
I put these data separately because I find them confusing. I don't know why they aren't direct with the data like the previous ones. At least you get an idea. (https://tourismanalytics.com/puerto-rico.html)
10.3 million arrivals at San Juan airport | US = 91%
1.7 million non-residents hotel registrations (all year 2022) | US (YTD July 2022) = 95%
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