December 3, 2019 - With ninety-six apartments offering advance payment and reservations via cryptocurrency thanks to the blog Ostrov Vir, and given the size of the island, its population, and the number of accommodation units, Vir has become one of the world's leading providers of crypto services.

HRTurizam reports that this story was recently published by the Czech portal Arbolet, whose internet team provides consulting and work in the crypto market. Arbolet member Václav contacted Miriam Kelečić, who runs the Slovakian blog Ostrov Vir and mediates apartment rentals on Vir to tourists from Slovakia and the Czech Republic, so the island's crypto market is almost immediately open to members of this community.

“I thought for a long time about using cryptocurrency payments, but did not know the area well enough. This is where Mr. Václav helped me the most,” says Miriam, thanks to whom accommodation on Vir can now be paid by cryptocurrency, that is, by booking through Ostrov Vir. Those 96 apartments paid in cryptocurrency represent 2.51 percent of the total Vir accommodation capacity, consisting of 3,819 accommodation units. In fact, the percentage in foreign exchange is higher because the number of apartments is an absolute figure of 100% occupancy with payment by card or cash, which means that the share of cryptocurrency in foreign exchange by the summer season will surely be even higher.

Miriam is the most influential promoter of Vir in Slovakia and the Czech Republic, and through her work and bringing the Travel Channel television team to Vir, the island has opened to the booming Slovakian tourist market. The Vir influencer and blogger at the same time represents the Slovakian and Czech apartment owners associations on the island of Vir, some of whom have already started receiving payments for cryptocurrencies BTC, BCH, LTC, ETH, and USDC. According to Arbolet, the service is connected to the Coinbase Commerce system, whose user interface is simple, intuitive to use, and extremely easy to understand.

Cryptocurrencies, known as virtual or digital currencies, only exist online; it is not issued or controlled by any central bank. Bitcoin is the most well-known cryptocurrency, also known as digital gold, and is globally accepted for online payments. There are several bitcoin ATMs in Croatia today - in Zagreb, Split, and Rijeka, and the popularity of bitcoin usage is also being contributed by entrepreneurs, such as those on Vir, who accept it in online payments for tourist accommodation or other services.

Apart from cryptocurrencies being used for online payments, they are traded like any other currency. Thus, the value of bitcoin nine years ago was $0.003 USD, and more than $9,000 last year. Today, there are hundreds of other cryptocurrencies and new ones are emerging almost daily. Some survive and grow, some fail, but the growth of the crypto market is persistent. Thus, more and more online stores are offering cryptocurrency payments, while digital wallet owners are looking for deals where they can exchange their cryptocurrency units for products or services.

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Vir island used to be known in Croatia as one of the places with the most illegaly built buildings, but these day's it's one of the rare places in Croatia where the tourist records are being broken this year. 

Sanja Jurišić writes for dnevnik.hr, about the tourist boom on the island: while others are trying to hide their tourist numbers in 2019, the tourist workers on Vir are bragging about theirs. One more bed and one more table at the restaurants are constantly being sought, and it's almost impossible to find an empty spot on the beach. Around 5000 people live on the island year-round, and there are ten times as many guests vacationing there at the moment. The last exact number is that there are over 45000 guests on the island, which is 2 percent more than in the same period last year. And in 2018 Vir recorded over 2.5 million overnight stays.

Srđan Liverić, the Tourist Board of Vir director says that those numbers put Vir at the top of the tourist destination in Zadar County and in the top seven in Croatia. This year they expect (and have good reason to expect!) even better results.

Vir's success did not fall from the skies, it's a result of hard work and a lot of investments into infrastructure - over 500 million kuna, to be exact. Currently there are over 15 thousand beds and 1800 private renters on the island. The number of four-star apartments with a breathtaking view is increasing rapidly. A renter from Vir island, Robert Maloča says that their season lasts for 80, 90 days at the moment, but they're working on prolonging that. That's achieved with offering quality content, but also by going to tourist fairs around the world, which brings customers from everywhere, in addition to the weekend vacationers who help bring their numbers up. Peter from New York says that there's music, there's bars, there's a lot of people on the beaches - this is paradise! 

Antonio Vučetić from Vir municipality says that Vir is the non-commercial record holder in Croatia. He stresses that it's not a minus for them, and invites all non-commercial customers to come to Vir. This successful tourist story could bring additional work on improving the beaches and a new hotel might get built in the centre of the town. 

As Morski writes on the 27th of January, 2019, over the last five years, the island of Vir has been experiencing regular works on large communal infrastructure projects. This intensive work on Vir began back in 2013, and the completion of this process, ie the construction of a water and sewage network in all of the island's settlements, as well as the complete asphalting of the streets and setting up public lighting, is expected by the year 2025.

Then, according to Vir's mayor Kristijan Kapović, everything Vir has had going on in its ''makeover'' procedure will finally be complete, meaning that by 2025, the entire island of Vir will be a completely ''done up'' island. This means that all 10,000 buildings and more than 800 streets will be fully equipped in an infrastructure sense, all facilities will have access to water and the sewage system, along with newly asphalted roads, public lighting and renovated beaches. Owing to the velocity of works that need to be undertaken until 2025, the mayor has asked Vir's residents for their support and their patience.

Here's how that all looks in practice: Every day, hundreds of employees from the island's local utility companies Vir Maintenance and Vir Waterways, as the chosen contractor of works on the project for the construction of the water and sewage network, are working on the maintenance and installation of new public lighting systems and construction of connections to the water supply and the sewerage network island of Vir.

Parallel with the intensive implementation of the island's asphalting project, in 2013 and 2017, more than 75 kilometres of roads with about 200,000 m² of asphalt were completed, while the existing roads on the island are all maintained on a daily basis, their length can be measured in several hundreds of kilometres. Along with 200 brand new light fixtures, a huge amount of public lighting have been set up in all of the island's small villages, while around 500 new ones are in preparation for being set up over the next two years. More than 200 million kuna has been invested in all of these projects in total so far.

The implementation of the enormous project for the construction of Vir's water supply system and sewage network has been carried out in its first and second phases with the beginning of the third phase on its way. The Prezid settlement will soon become the new construction site for the construction of both water supply and drainage facilities for about 1,300 buildings.

''The entire island of Vir with all of its settlements, or about 7,000 buildings that are not yet covered by the grid, should receive water and sewage systems by the end of 2023, or in the first half of 2024. Once the large infrastructure pipes are placed in the ground, public lighting and asphalt will be placed in all the streets without such communal infrastructure. This will be accomplished by 2025,'' concluded Kapović.

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Click here for the original article by Kazimir Skrbic on eZadar

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