Surfing, bitcoin, and crime reduction were responsible for the country’s tourism comeback.
Compared to 2019 Salvador’s tourism revenue increased by 6%.
The president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, expressed his views on the rise in tourism-related revenue in the country and advocated for the introduction of bitcoin (BTC) as legal cash. Bukele claimed that three important factors, the promotion of surf and the decline in crime were responsible for this rise.
The president stated:
Only a handful of countries have been able to recover its tourism to pre-pandemic levels. And that’s international tourism, so the reasons behind it are mostly bitcoin and surf.
El Salvador was recently listed among the countries whose tourism revenues have reached pre-pandemic levels. According to the World Tourism Group, El Salvador has increased its tourism-related revenue by 6% compared to 2019. The country’s tourism minister, Morena Valdez, said in February that the sector had grown by 30% since this time.
El Salvador’s Positive Approach on BTC
Statistics also demonstrate a dramatic decline in crime and homicide since 2020 in El Salvador. Additionally, El Salvador has some of the best waves in the world for surfing. The actions taken by the administration of Bukele to combat gang-related crime, including the proclamation of a state of emergency that led to the detention of more than 9,000 people in April of last year, have drawn harsh criticism. Bukele asserts that this has, nevertheless, accelerated the development of the country’s tourism sector.
The government anticipates new bitcoin investments will increase the number of bitcoin advocates in the nation. The recent announcement by Bank Of The Future, a cryptocurrency investment platform, that it will be investing $6 billion in El Salvador was made by Milena Mayorga, El Salvador’s ambassador to the US.