Thailand tourism industry wants to attract digital currency millionaires

Thailand ranks among the world’s leading travel destinations, with the number of international arrivals per year in the country growing continuously to reach millions—until the COVID-19 pandemic. The government has seen the wide impact of the pandemic, which prompted it to turn to innovations to help the situation. Now, the government’s attention has shifted to the tourism industry in a bid to boost Thailand’s economy.

Interestingly, tourism contributed 18.21% to the country’s GDP in 2019 and dropped to 6.78% in 2020. Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) Governor Yuthasak Supasorn recently announced that the government intends to set up a new unit to issue its own digital currency, build a new tourism ecosystem and develop a wallet.

According to the TAT governor, some digital currency millionaires are looking for avenues, which led the government agency to look into the feasibility of creating an environment in Thailand where they can make transactions with digital currencies without exchanging them or being faced with taxes.

 “Crypto is the future, so we must make Thailand a crypto-positive society to welcome this group of quality tourists,” said Yuthasak.

According to Statista report, Thailand’s international tourist arrival dropped drastically from 39.8 million in 2019 to 6.7 million in 2020.

The TAT is enthusiastic that about a million tourists will be traveling to Thailand in the first quarter of 2022 and hopes that 10% of tourists are digital currency holders. Starting November 2021, vaccinated international travelers who have stayed in one of 63 countries for 21 days could travel to Thailand without going into quarantine (except a compulsory one night stay while waiting for the results of the COVID-19 test).

TAT utility token creation

As CoinGeek reported in October, TAT is planning to create its own utility token to take advantage of the growing popularity of digital currencies.

The TAT coin would involve the transfer of vouchers into digital tokens that could help traders earn more cash.

The agency plans to develop a “cryptourism” atmosphere by offering a Bitcoin debit card at airports that digital currency nomads can use during their trips without paying an extra fee at the ATM or money exchange.

The workcation trend also benefits long-stay digital currency nomads who can work from anywhere and are considered big spenders for the tourism industry.

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