If you pay them, they will come: the US city giving tourists cash to visit

Redmond, Washington, saw visitor numbers plummet when the pandemic struck but its novel response is a hit

Microsoft's hometown of Redmond, Washington, has turned to a very straightforward technique to jumpstart tourism more than a year after Covid-19 struck and the corporate travel it had come to rely on, dried up -pay people to visit.

The small city just east of Seattle is home to Microsoft's headquarters, along with such companies as Nintendo of America, the aerospace company SpaceX and Facebook.

Related: Pandemic will weigh heaviest on tourism-dependent economies, warns IMF