It only attracted a few hundred participants in the beginning. But, by 2009, backed by a marketing campaign, passport holders of the island nation were given visa-free access to the 26 Schengen area countries and demand increased rapidly.

The industry has seen huge growth in recent years. 2014 marked the first year that the US ran out of immigrant-investor visas before the end of the fiscal year.

London-based CS Global Partners, the consultancy firm that made the inflight-magazine advert I read, shepherds investors through the legal process of procuring a passport through investment. The firm says interest in their services has grown fourfold in the past year.

“We are definitely seeing big shifts,” says CEO Micha Emmett. “The traditional market still exists – very much so – but we’ve seen [people from] countries that were never interested in second citizenship by investment options before now coming online making inquiries. For example, we saw a 400% increase in enquiries from Turkey in March.”

Events including the decision by Britain to leave the European Union and the 2016 US Presidential election are driving new interest.

UK citizens are now seriously weighing their options, Emmett says.

“In terms of what happened in the UK with Brexit, on the day that the vote was announced, our phones rang off the hook, I was approached in the street by people, there was a very apparent panic,” she adds.