Last weekend, the Guam Visitors
Bureau celebrated its 50th anniversary as an autonomous Government of Guam
agency and celebrated the men and women who GVB says "pioneered" our
visitor industry which has brought 1.18 million tourists to Guam this
year. The list was long and very
noteworthy. But I must write that there
were at least two notable figures who were missing from that list. Not sure if it was an oversight or chalk it
up to politics.
The first is former Guam Governor
Carl Gutierrez. The architect behind the
Pleasure Island in Tumon and the man who pushed an aggressive visitor agenda
that yielded 1,381,513 tourists to Guam in 1997 was not a part of the recent
GVB acknowledgements. Governor Gutierrez
was actively in his two terms reaching to new markets including Australia and
Europe to bring new investment and opportunities.
The other is former Guam Governor
Carlos Camacho. The last appointed and
first elected Governor of Guam is credited for among other things bringing a
brash young tourism professional from Alabama named Bert Unpingco back home to
draw more people to Guam and its fledgling industry. Governor Camacho also was the man who brought
the "sister city" agreements to the fold and started with Taipei
City, Taiwan upon his election in 1970 which has yieled over 330,000 visitors
to Guam in just the last 10 years alone.
He is also credited a number of other agreements that has been the
modern Guam feeder of tourists to our island now.
These two would have been my vote
to be honored if asked-I wasn't. I did
not mention the younger former Guam Governor Felix Camacho who ushered in the
inclusion of Russian visitors we have today and his work with another noted
leader-current Guam Congresswoman Madeline Bordallo-who ensured the passage of the China and Russia Visa
Waiver legislation on Capitol Hill.
The funny thing about these types
of events is that you run the risk of missing people who should be honored
similarly. From experience, these
oversights are not pretty. In fact, they
can be downright painful.
Message to GVB-you had a whole
year to figure this out and how quickly you forgot some of the people whom you
ushered all across the Pacific Rim and beyond, whom you asked to speak at your
countless events and whom you sought counsel to ensure continued funding for
your work both here and abroad.
Maybe
the pioneers honored should have been the past and current staff at GVB. They did all the heavy lifting. They executed what the Board of Directors
charged them to do. They are tourism for Guam.
We should always think through some of these
actions.
Earlier I noted that the
exclusions may have been political. That
might be somewhat true. It is hard to
place four of Guam's living Governors in one room in the climate today-a month
shy from the start of the new election cycle.
But what is the harm in bringing them into a room to celebrate our economic life
blood-tourism.
They and everyone that worked for
them also contributed to growing tourism over the past five decades. Let's see what the 60th anniversary of GVB
shapes into and make this right.