Yaatri

Visa free entry for whom?

soitgoes

Visa-free entry for their citizens to other countries.

Jaimito Cartero

I would prefer all countries be visa free, but that's just the Mastercard side of me speaking.

Two things I don't like about visas, one the cost/time element, and then the space they take up in my passport. I already have full pages taken up by Indonesia, Cambodia and Russia.

If they issued a visa for a reasonable amount of time (5-10 years), I wouldn't be so adverse to getting one either. I like Brazil, but the visa process just wears me out.

The worst visa application was Russia, of course. I've filled out less paperwork for home loans.

cpx

My thoughts exactly. I've been avoiding Brazil and Russia for the same reason.
If they are charging high cost for the visa, they might just give us one for
multiple years or for the life of the passport.

jpatokal

My previous record was US$200 and change in "facilitation services" for getting a multiple-entry business visa for Indonesia, but now I'm looking at a figure in the US$600-800 ballpark for getting into Saudi Arabia. Funny how it's always the countries nobody wants to go to that make it the hardest to get in

B747-437B

How much of that is a facilitation fee? My Saudi visa cost only 200 Riyals (~US$50) earlier this year.

World_Traveler

I have skipped pleasure trips to Brazil because of both the fees & the visa processing times involved.

CPRich

For a real, non-MR trip, the steepest visa fees I've seen are a blip in the overall airfare, hotel, car, etc., costs. For a MR, I see it could be a deciding factor, but I've never been in that situation.

chollie

No, but it really smarted when I went back to Chile last Christmas. There's a $100 fee (entry fee? don't think it's exactly a visa). It's a one-time fee BUT...it is limited by the passport expiration date. In other words, because I'd renewed my passport a couple months earlier, I got stuck paying the fee AGAIN.

I was told that the fee used to be much less (still is for folks from most countries), but it was raised in direct retaliation for the US raising the entry fee/visa fee for Chilean citizens.

JDiver

Many countries (Chile, Brazil as examples) with $100 visa fees for US citizens / residents have instituted reciprocity fees - they charge what the US charges their residents to visit the USA.

There are ways of maximizing these - Chile makes it easy, as your passport will be valid for Chilean visits for the remaining life of your passport (up to ten years.) For others, you can often purchase a multiple entry visa - it took me a short trip to the Indian consulate in San Francisco, and picking up the passport in the afternoon, to get a ten year multiple entry visa I can transfer to a new passport.

For Brazil, I found it quite easy to get a multiple entry visa good for five years - $100 for a single entry would be a bit much, but it's easy to get a multiple entry visa if you know about it.

Two sources I use for visa information include:


Delta Airlines Visa & Passport Information pages (select your country of citizenship, and your destination, for very good information

and


Travel Document Services (a commercial visa service I have found very reliable and cheaper than, say, Zierer, where you can see the requirements for US residents and download most visa applications.)

Would I worry too much about paying a visa fee, and even fulfilling requirements I feel onerous and ridiculous (are you reading this, Mr. Putin? Russian requirements are very reminiscent of a police state for a destination I had business in or wanted to visit, particularly given I may be spending thousands of dollars on flights and accommodations? I don't think so!

Jaimito Cartero

I paid more for my Russian visa than my airplane ticket cost (before tax). Of course it was a mini-jumbo.

Kagehitokiri

if i wanted to go somewhere, itd probably have to be over $300 to make me stop and consider if thats worth it..

Swanhunter

That's what I paid for a single entry business visa too. I guess if you don't have a business partner to issue an invite, that is when it becomes expensive.

aurigakb

A Singapore passport is great for travelling around Asia-- no visa needed for China, Indonesia, Cambodia, Vietnam, etc.

montrealer

I often travel 3-5x to an international destination in the space of a year or so. Once in a while I'll try to add a day or weekend long stopover in an interesting connecting city for tourism, e.g. BKK on the way to SIN, Morocco on the way to Lisbon, transiting in Vienna rather than Frankfurt. I've canned ideas to visit Brazil and Chile like this in the past 2 months - I did not have time to go for more than a few days en route to somewhere else, and $100+ fees plus the hassle of getting the visa were just not worth it compared to stopping off somewhere else or going home.