Thailand hopes to attract "crypto tourists" with its future plans to make transacting in crypto easier within the country.
Thailand is looking for new ways to help get its tourism industry back on its feet after the pandemic.
One such way to bring in money to the tourism economy, according to the Tourism Authority of Thailand, is to start accepting digital currencies for travel and overall making it easier to transact with crypto within the country.
Yuthasak Supasorn, the governor of the tourism board, told Bloomberg this week: “If Thailand is looking to recover about 80% of its pre-pandemic tourism revenue in 2023 but with half the number of foreign tourist arrivals we saw in 2019, we can achieve that by getting someone like Russell Crowe or a crypto holder like Tim Cook to travel here.”
While plans to actually accept crypto for travel are far in the future, Supasorn noted that the tourism board will be creating a unit in 2022 that will figure out how to issue its own coin and wallet, as well as support a digital currency tourism ecosystem. The board is currently brainstorming its crypto unit and is in talks with the Securities and Exchange Commision, the Bank of Thailand and crypto exchange Bitkub Online Co.
Yuthasak told Bloomberg: “If [people] can use their currencies here without having to exchange it, or be faced with government taxes, then it would create convenience for them.”
According to a recent report released by CoinMarketCap Academy, Thailand is up there in terms of countries that are interested in parts of the crypto industry, like NFTs. Over the past three months, Thailand has shown an interest in niche cryptocurrencies like SatoshiStreetBets Token, EpicHero 3D NFT and Safe Earn.
