These luxury hotels now take bitcoin
Cryptocurrency is paying for luxury vacations
Virtual currency is paying for luxury vacations.
The five-star Dolder Grand Hotel in Zurich now accepts Bitcoin as payment for overnight stays, spa treatments and food and beverages.
The hotel partnered with Swiss fintech firm Inacta AG which developed a mobile app called Inapay to facilitate the payment and conversion of cryptocurrencies into Swiss Franc or Euro once the payment is completed.
"We believe Bitcoin is here to stay, it only seems natural to offer more choices in the payment process," André Meier, director of finance at Dolder Hotel AG said in a statement.
Room rates at the hotel vary but start at around BTC .1 per night or $796.
The luxury hotel joins a number of others across the globe that have started accepting bitcoin to cater to the growing digital payment demand.
Canada-based Sandman Hotel Group started accepting bitcoin as a form of payment for its room reservations across all of its 44 hotels as early as 2014. The hotel group uses Coinbase, a provider of bitcoin wallets and payment services. Customer simply select bitcoin as their preferred payment option and receive a digital invoice that transfers the bitcoins to Sandman’s account. And earlier this year, Casual Hoteles in Spain ran a pilot program to let guests pay with cryptocurrency.
"It’s interesting to see that it’s happening on a higher end. If you’re serious about crypto, you probably have quite a lot of money," Dan Simon, CEO of Vested, an financial communications firm and author of "The Money Hackers," told FOX Business.
Travel booking company Expedia started taking bitcoin payments for hotels in 2014 after customers started requesting it. And CheapAir began allowing bitcoin users to book hotel stays with the cryptocurrency the same year.
Users can find out which businesses accept bitcoin by using sites like CoinMap.org, which features a map of all businesses that accept bitcoin so customers can call ahead to a hotel or restaurant before showing up.