Just in time for the New Year, the Guam Visitors Bureau (GVB) officially launched the “Omoide Guam” Campaign in Japan, Guam’s largest visitor market. Omoide is the Japanese word for memory.

“The idea behind this campaign is to invite our Japanese visitors to come to Guam with family and friends to make memories that will last a lifetime,” GVB General Manager Joann Camacho said. “After the triple disasters, we wanted to continue offering our Japanese visitors a way to recuperate, but at the same time to be sensitive to the issue and show support for their efforts to re-build. GVB promotes Guam in this campaign as the destination of choice for families and friends.”

The campaign kicked-off with a new microsite and can be accessed at http://omoide.visitguam.jp. The interactive website has several features that allow potential travelers to discover more about Guam, and is highly integrated with social media. Visitors can create custom postcards and albums with photos uploaded direct from Facebook, and then share what they create on Facebook, Twitter and Japan’s most popular social media site, Mixie.

“Since the launch of the campaign, GVB continues to roll out new features that allow visitors to send personalized electronic postcards, create custom albums and view a map of Guam that highlights places of interest on the island,” GVB Deputy General Manager Nathan Denight said. “In connection with this campaign, we also began airing the first of 25 short films showing what we have to offer visitors from sand and surf to shopping and culture.”

These five-minute programs will air on national TV in Japan during primetime in High Definition (HD). They will also be available online through the Omoide Guam microsite. Each episode will feature a family, senior couple or group enjoying Guam’s hotels, restaurants, culture, nature and more. The longer format allows for a more engaging way to showcase our destination than the typical 15 or 30 second TV commercial, and the HD format provides high quality images of our island.

The use of mobile phones in Japan is very high, and the Omoide Guam microsite can be easily accessed while on the go. Quick Response or QR codes have been provided to our travel partners who place them in brochures and other marketing materials. The QR codes direct mobile phones to the website, where the videos can also be viewed directly.

Travelers from Japan account for 71% of all visitor arrivals to Guam, and GVB continues to promote increased length of stay and more on-island spending. Japan arrival numbers have stabilized, returning to pre-disaster levels. GVB’s year-to-date arrivals from Japan for FY 2012 (October 1 – December 31) show an increase of 0.2% compared to the same period in FY 2011. Total arrivals for FY2012 are up by 4.4%.