Guam popular with tourists despite North-Korea-U.S. tensions

Tourists haven't been deterred from visiting the tropical island of Guam even though the U.S. territory has been at the centre of North Korean and U.S. threats during the past week.

Won Hyung-jin, an official from Modetour, a large South Korean travel agency, said several customers called with concerns, but they weren't worried enough to pay cancellation fees for their trips.

"It seems North Korea racks up tension once or twice every year, and travellers have become insensitive about it," Won said. His company has sent about 5,000 travellers a month to Guam this year, mostly on package tours.

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The U.S. territory has a population of 160,000, but it attracted 1.5 million visitors last year. One third of Guam's jobs are in the tourism industry.

Guam is a key outpost for the U.S. military, which uses it as a base for bombers and submarines.

Popular getaway for Japanese, South Koreans

The island's sandy beaches and aquamarine waters also make it a popular getaway for travellers from Japan and South Korea. Guam is only about three hours by plane from major cities in both countries.

The number of South Korean travellers in particular has been growing lately because five low-cost airlines started flying to Guam from South Korea, said Antonio Muna, the vice-president of Guam Visitors Bureau. This helped boost arrival figures to a 20-year-high in July, Muna said.

The threats came in a week in which longstanding tensions between the countries risked abruptly boiling over. New United Nations sanctions condemning the North's rapidly developing nuclear program drew fresh ire and threats from Pyongyang. U.S. President Donald Trump responded by vowing to rain down "fire and fury" if challenged. The North then threatened to lob missiles near Guam.

No figures on cancellations

The Guam Visitors Bureau has heard reports of cancellations, but Muna said it doesn't yet have any concrete figures on how many took place. Officials are still expecting a strong August, Muna said.

"Japan and Korea make over 90 per cent of our arrivals. And they're much closer to North Korea than Guam is," Muna said.

The agency has been relaying assurances from the governor and defence officials that Guam is protected and safe, he said.

Trump told Guam's Republican governor the global attention would send more tourists to the island.

"You're going to go up like tenfold with the expenditure of no money," he told Eddie Calvo in a telephone conversation Calvo posted Sunday on Facebook. Trump said he'd been watching scenes of Guam on the news, and "it just looks like a beautiful place."

Calvo replied: "It's paradise."

"We've got 95 per cent occupancy and after all this stuff calms down, we're going to have 110 per cent occupancy," Calvo said.