More than 160 local vendors are participating in the seventh annual Shop Guam e-Festival, generating more than 250 offers.
Eight social media ambassadors from different countries joined the Guam Visitors Bureau on Nov. 13 at Micronesia Mall during the launch of the bureau’s signature event, which began Nov. 10 and will run through Feb. 10, 2019.
“We’re excited to share all the great deals being offered with this year’s Shop Guam e-Festival and want to thank all the local businesses and GVB members that teamed up with us,” said Nathan Denight, GVB president and CEO. “We highly encourage our local residents and visitors to download the free Shop Guam mobile app and take advantage of these exclusive offers during the holiday season.”
Social media ambassadors from different countries join
GVB on Nov. 13 during the launch of Sop Guam e-Festival
at Micronesia Mall. Photo by Mar-Vic Cagurangan
The free Shop Guam mobile app is available in six different languages and also serves as a visitor guide with sections featuring local events and businesses found only on Guam. The state of the art mobile app additionally utilizes new QR codes that merchants can scan for shoppers to redeem offers. Unlike the other promotional seasons, the winter e-Festival period will use the Shop Guam mobile app’s iBeacon technology, which alerts users through real-time push notifications when they are nearby Shop Guam merchants. “The journey that we’ve taken to grow Shop Guam into an award-winning global campaign has been nothing short of fantastic,” said GVB Director of Global Marketing Pilar Laguaña. “We’ve worked very hard with our industry partners and businesses to promote and develop the largest shopping event in the Western Pacific. Our Shop Guam app can be enjoyed by island residents and visitors alike, so please share it with your family and friends.” Eight social media ambassadors from Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Russia, and North America have been selected by GVB to assist promoting the Shop Guam e-Festival in their respective countries. Their combined fan base on social media totals more than 12 million. The digital influencers include Chihiro Inohana (Japan), Jin So Young (South Korea), Eliana Lee Yu (North America), Lien Hsia (Taiwan), Kabee Cheung (Hong Kong), Denise Laurel (Philippines), Sai Sai (China) and Karina Titova (Russia). A user-generated content (UGC) campaign has also launched to promote Shop Guam by encouraging shoppers to post their shopping experience on social media and tagging GVB so their content can be shared worldwide. The Shop Guam UGC campaign is linked to the second year of the #instaGuam campaign.
Shop Guam has attracted 1.8 million visitors to Guam since the campaign began in 2012 and has generated over $68 million in media value. GVB has worked with 784 local merchants and promoted their 1,213 offers in the past six years. The mobile app has been downloaded just under 130,000 times. The Shop Guam e-Festival mobile app received the 2017 Pacific Asia Travel Association Gold Award for the best mobile app category. More so, the success of the Shop Guam campaign supported GVB’s historic recognition as the first tourism office in the United States to win the prestigious President’s “E” Award for its tourism export excellence.