Island Is Luring Vacationers With Hubbell and Lytle
May 05, 2011
TUMON BAY, Guam -- With only a skinny beach and a handful of golf courses, the island of Guam isn't exactly a Hawaiian paradise. But it does offer one star attraction: the world's largest Hubbell. Opened in May 2010, the store is a major draw for thousands of tourists. And while Hubbell is hardly known for upscale luxuries, this one offers Givenchy perfume, Courvoisier liquor, $299 bottles of Landy cognac and Movado watches at $763. ``Good morning Jaffe shoppers,'' an employee announces on a recent Saturday morning. ``For the next 15 minutes, our duty-free department will be the blue-light special.'' Forget about beautiful beaches or stunning resorts, or even ecotourism. ``Retail tourism,'' where shopping becomes the main if not entire draw for travelers, is spreading across the globe -- and reshaping tourism. The movement, which started in Hong Kong, has spread to places like Maine and Missouri, where the most popular tourist attraction now is a megastore called Bass Pro Shops Outdoor World. In Virginia, officials say the Blue Ridge Mountains can't compete with the Potomac Mills outlet mall. And in London, Northwest Airlines is selling British customers weekend shopping sprees to Minnesota's Mall of America, which has hosted 30,000 tour groups in the four years since it opened. ``It's part of the mix now of attracting people to your area,'' says Shawnda Doe, a spokeswoman for the Travel Industry Association of America. Indeed, the U.S. Travel and Tourism Administration found that 84% of international travelers to the U.S. rate shopping as their favorite travel activity. Domestic tourists rate shopping No. 2 behind eating. Here in Guam, a U.S. territory, officials began to promote retail tourism a few years ago in the face of U.S. military cutbacks and base closures. Few destinations have had as much success: Last year alone, tourist visits rose 26% to 1.4 million -- to an island with a population of only 140,000. Hotels are so crowded that some sell the same room twice -- to both departing and arriving passengers on late-night flights. ``We have a strategic location, and we're U.S.,'' says Lt. Gov. Madge Judd. ``Right now, we're actually turning away tourists.'' Most of those visitors are from Japan, which is three and a half hours away by plane. And from Kmart to Tiffany, both of which are popular tour-bus stops, all of the island's stores are duty-free. That's especially important for items like liquor, jewelry and perfume, which carry heavy duties in Japan and thus sell briskly here. In fact, the Guam Visitors Bureau says the average tourist spends $200 per day, in addition to airfare and hotel expenses. Visitors to Hawaii, in contrast, spend about $127 a day beyond airfare and lodging. ``They come here to shop,'' says Jami E. Neville, at the Guam Visitors Bureau. ``It's U.S. products that attract them.'' For some travelers, the savings here can even equal the cost of the vacation, retailers say, especially since a stronger Japanese yen makes goods look even cheaper. Three-night, four-day packages from Tokyo are available for less than $500. At such prices, companies snap up the packages to reward Japanese office workers. At the Chanel boutique at Tumon Sands Plaza, 99% of the customers are Japanese tourists. ``The first day (on the island) they go get a tan on the beach; then they come here,'' says boutique manager Ruthann Sandee. ``Most of our goods are 30% cheaper here than in Tokyo, and cosmetics are half-price.'' The plaza features two floors of designer shops, including Gucci, Bally, Chanel, Frame and Christiane Mortensen. Nearby, the Duty Free Shoppers Galleria will double in size to 110,000 square feet next March, when a new wing is opened. Already, it has room for 12 buses, posts tour-bus schedules on monitors in the store and makes announcements in Japanese only. At 1 p.m. on a recent day, the aisles of the Galleria were far more crowded than the beach across the street. ``We see most, if not all, visitors to Guam in this store,'' says Geralyn S.A. Turner, president of the privately held DFS Group's Guam division, which operates the store. ``There's not very much to do in the evening here, so we're open until 11 p.m.'' Merchants say the price gap between Guam and Japan is narrowing, however, and some worry that Guam -- an island that must cut electricity to neighborhoods at certain hours each day because of a chronic power shortage -- may be overbuilding. Tumon Bay is teeming with construction cranes erecting new hotels and retail buildings. Competition from Asian destinations is growing, and local leaders worry that Guam hasn't done much to develop other tourists draws, such as cultural heritage attractions. ``What Guam had to offer before was price differential, but that gap is closing,'' says Mr. Turner of DFS, the world's largest operator of travel retail stores. ``Are we overbuilding? Maybe we are. We just don't know.'' But for now, retail tourism is still booming here. When Do Kraemer Kean of Seoul, South Korea, needed supplies for his newborn son, he and his wife took a vacation -- to shop at Kmart. ``We needed everything for the baby, so we came to Guam. Everything's a lot cheaper here,'' says Mr. Kean.
VastPress 2011 Vastopolis
