Crypto Wealth Fuels ‘Tremendous’ Demand for Luxury Travel
The rise of bitcoin has reportedly been good for the luxury travel sector.
As the Financial Times (FT) reported Sunday (Aug. 31), a growing number of private jet and high-end cruise operators have begun taking cryptocurrency payments as they see a number of customers enjoying new digital asset wealth.
“Tremendous” demand from wealthy younger travelers has led Flexjet-owned FXAIR to accept crypto payments, Flexjet Chair Kenn Ricci told FT.
Ricci said Flexjet has seen a “significant” rise in charter flight bookings in recent months from “young entrepreneurs in the bitcoin space [who] fly farther and want larger planes. We save them time. … And time is the most precious luxury.”
FXAIR charges around $80,000 to take travelers from Farnborough airport, near London, to New York City, the report added. And at sea, Virgin Voyages now lets customers purchase an $120,000 annual pass using crypto.
As FT noted, bitcoin, along with shares in companies like Coinbase, hit record highs recently, thanks in part to President Donald Trump’s support for the sector and a pledge to make America the world’s “crypto capital.” Trump in July signed landmark stablecoin legislation into law, and has appointed crypto-friendly regulators and backed several digital asset businesses.
“Those who are seeing the value of their bitcoin grow rapidly are spending it on private jets or luxury hotels or luxury cruises,” said Paul Charles, CEO of luxury travel consultancy PC Agency.
“There is a younger generation that’s grown up that is desperate to travel, to not be stuck with the humdrum and the usual.”
In related news, PYMNTS wrote last week about the increasing mainstream acceptance of stablecoins, as illustrated by a recent pair of high‑profile Series B fundraisings.
Last Thursday (Aug. 28), M0 announced it had raised $40 million to fuel its application-specific stablecoin infrastructure, which will let developers launch interoperable, customizable digital dollar tokens atop a unified liquidity layer.
The same day, Rain landed $58 million in new funding to widen its global stablecoin infrastructure, especially facilitating enterprise and neobank access to on- and off-ramps, wallets, cards and cross-border rails. Rain is a Visa principal member, which lets it issue cards that work anywhere Visa is accepted.
“These capital injections underscore the industry’s focus not on novel brand tokens, but on plumbing like scalable, composable rails that enable seamless, cross-chain, cross-currency transaction flow,” PYMNTS wrote.
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