The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
The countries where getting a visa hurts most
With miles of red tape and tales of passports being shredded by mistake, it seems some places don’t want tourists at all. Sarah Marshall outs them
Looking back over the past decade or so, if I added up the number of hours spent filling in visa application forms, travelling to embassies and listening to hold muzak on a loop in long telephone queues, I would probably have enough time to, well, take a holiday. After all that, I certainly needed one.
So, when Kenya – a country I regularly visit – announced that visas would be dropped at the beginning of 2024, I breathed a sigh of relief. No more two-hour completions of online forms requiring my dad’s mobile number and the uploading of hotel reservations as JPEGS no larger than 297KB. (In practice, the new Electronic Travel Authorisation must be applied for 72 hours prior to travel, so the process isn’t totally hassle-free.)
Despite being prone to instances of corruption and disappearing cash, it was so much easier in the days of visas on arrival. The introduction of an e-visa system brought with it new levels of nonsensical bureaucracy not known since British authorities left.
Kenya isn’t an isolated case. Getting a visa is a hurdle to visiting many countries. According to visa and passport specialist Travcour, which processes up to 5,000 applications per year, Ghana currently holds the title for most complicated visa application process: an online form, followed by paying to book an appointment, uploading 10 documents, then turning up to the embassy with a passport.
It is even worse if the country in question doesn’t have a UK embassy. I once waited at home for two months while my passport floated around Paris, only to cancel a trip to Chad when the visa still hadn’t arrived by the date I was due to fly.
James Willcox, founder of travel company Untamed Borders, which specialises in visiting “interesting and inaccessible places”, has encountered similar issues.
“Despite the hospitality of people in the region, a trip to the embassy or consulate is less about rolling out the red carpet and more about rolling out the red tape,” he says. “We have had guests issued visas with the wrong dates, or intended for someone else – and on one occasion had a passport accidentally shredded by the the embassy staff.”
Visa on arrival isn’t always easier. Willcox recalls an incident in 2012 when the issuing of visas “on a sensitive border” was abruptly suspended without announcement.
“There was talk of a diplomatic row or a military incursion,” he says. “Finally, it was discovered that the service had been stopped because they had run out of visa stickers and one of the immigration staff had to get the bus to the capital to get some more. This was not a banana republic either, but a border between two nuclear powers.”
Of course, securing visas to countries off the beaten track will always be much trickier. But even popular destinations are not without their complications.
Back in 2022, India’s visa debacle caused thousands to miss their holidays due largely to a diplomatic stand-off between then prime ministers Narendra Modi and Boris Johnson. Currently, an application for Tanzania can take up to four weeks, according to Travcour. And early last year, my own application for a visa to Bhutan, a country eager to court tourism but a stickler for the rules, was initially rejected because the photograph submitted didn’t show enough of my ears.
Even simple things can cause problems. “People don’t understand that it is very important to have your place of birth match your passport,” explains
Darren Bridges, director for Travcour. “For example, I might write London on a form, but my passport might say Tooting. Another common one for India is writing ‘British’ when the authorities want to read ‘United Kingdom’. There are so many potholes, which is why we have our purpose – if it takes a person an hour and a half to fill out a form, we can do it in six minutes.”
Applying for visas undoubtedly requires investment of time and effort. But there is a financial cost to consider, too. Bridges says Nigeria currently charges Britons the highest amount – around £660. My most expensive visa mission to date was for China – rated one of the most laborious to obtain since the country opened its borders to foreigners post-Covid, and one of several countries requiring biometrics. Admittedly, it was a fast-track, multientry visa secured through an agency, but I still spent more than £1,000.
Surprisingly, all these costs and complications are still not a deterrent for committed travellers. “Often there is a special reason for going to these places, which makes travellers more determined,” says Candice Buchan, head of tour operator Rainbow. “It means that the sales and marketing [teams] of tourist boards and tour operators need to work a bit harder to articulate why you would visit a destination like that – but arguably, you are getting a higher-value traveller who is travelling with real intent.”
Nor should we forget that, in spite of Brexit, we still have one of the most powerful passports in the world. Listed joint-14th in the 2024 Henley Passport Index, British documents give visa-free access to 191 destinations compared with 187 a year ago.
Furthermore, there are always those odd occasions when the application process is smoother than expected. “In the mid-noughties,” James Willcox remembers, “I was queueing in Tehran for an Uzbek visa when I was pulled out of the line, my passport was taken and I was led to a separate, well-appointed room. There, I was given a cup of tea and some cake, and was asked if I could complete the ambassador’s son’s English homework. I agreed, and upon completion, I was given my passport back complete with the Uzbek visa. The usual waiting time is five days.”