Thailand woos more tourists with pioneering NFT incentives

With the aim of fostering the country’s tourism sector, the non-fungible token (NFT) project stems from a partnership between the TAT and its over 30 partners, which includes renowned information technology company, Crypto City Connext.

All digital coupons available in this project feature a picture of "Nong Sukjai”, the TAT's mascot, decorated in various styles. The project also involves collaboration with over 20 artists to design "Nong Sukjai", the TAT said on its website.

It said that since the project is still in the trial phase, the NFT could be collected only at the attractions, namely Ratchaprasong Road (Bangkok), Nimmanhaemin Road (Chiang Mai), Dibuk Road, (Phuket), Khao Niaw Road (Khon Kaen), Yomjinda Road (Rayong).

The TAT said that it had released 5,550 digital coupons on April 13 at those five venues. Of the total, 5,000 NFTs will be in the "normal" category, 500 will be "rare", and the remaining 50 will be "super rare".

The level indicates how difficult it will be to find the coupons; the rarer it is, the more worthy the prize the holder will earn, it said.

The TAT explained that travellers can collect the NFTs by scanning the QR code on the standee badge placed in those venues to receive the digital coupons. The NFTs will be kept in each traveller's personal e-wallet.

Hatsathorn Srisuk, the manager of this project, told The Nation that the digital coupons would be randomly given to travellers, meaning that not everyone will get the rare or super rare ones.

He added that the project had been designed to be user-friendly for all tourists, even those who are not technologically proficient.

Hatsathorn said that "Thailand is the first nation to employ NFT technology to develop a sharing token system that uses tokens as an intermediary to share benefits with tourists and the local community as well as could provide benefits to visitors."

The TAT is also planning to expand the locations where visitors can collect their digital vouchers throughout all provinces in the future.