Is El Salvador becoming a test bed for bitcoin tourism?

Santander bank recently published a report stating El Salvador is benefiting tremendously from bitcoin tourism. Now that anyone visiting El Salvador can use bitcoin to pay for everything especially around El Zonte (aka bitcoin beach) there has been a wave of bitcoin tourists boosting economic growth.

In 2019 (pre-pandemic) El Salvadors tourism income as a percent of GDP was 6%. Today El Salvadors tourism income as a percent of GDP is 10%. Not only has adopting bitcoin helped ES get back to pre-pandemic tourism levels it has almost doubled tourism income for the country.

In an age of post covid - high cost of living - high interest rate fuelled stagnation, it seems people are cutting back on luxuries and the first luxury to go is travel. This will only get worse as a global recession takes hold.

Could bitcoin be the spark needed to boost tourism in countries that derive a significant percentage of their GDP from tourism. The answer could very well be yes, especially if bitcoin is about to enter a bull market as the rest of the global economy enters stagflation.

Any country that relies on tourism demand should have a bitcoin strategy for bringing in tourists. Not having this in place is economic negligence.

I can think of so many countries that would benefit from attracting bitcoin tourists:

Maldives

Seychelles

British Virgin Islands

Bahamas

Macao

Philippines

Thailand

Cambodia

Colombia

Brazil

Egypt

Dubai

Spain

Italy

Portugal

France

Monaco

Greece

Turkey

The list goes on.

These countries see a significant portion of their GDP derived from tourism. Would it not make sense for each of these countries to at least have a bitcoin sandbox, a tourist zone that has dedicated itself to being bitcoin friendly by adopting tax free friction free lightning payments.

El Salvador is paving the way and proving that this kind of development would be highly beneficial for their economies and their local residents. El Salvador has proven that embracing bitcoin tourism can not only help revive tourism after a once in a generation global lockdown it can actually double a countries income derived from tourism.

These nations and all nations that rely on tourism should take note and work to implement bitcoin friendly tourist zones in order to boost tourism and by extension boost their economic well being.