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“Tedious and complicated’’ e-visa process will only keep tourists away
View(s):- Stakeholders raise concerns, warn will lose out to competitors like Thailand
By Sandun Jayawardana
Tourism industry insiders say that the move to outsource e-visa processing continues to damage the country’s tourism prospects and are urging the government to follow Thailand’s example and extend visa-free entry to more countries.
The government’s tripartite agreement to outsource online and on-arrival visa processing involves GBS Technology Services, IVS Global-FZCO, and VFS VF Worldwide Holdings Ltd. Following a Cabinet decision though, the Department of Immigration and Emigration has been handling the processing of on-arrival visas for foreigners since early last month.
Outsourcing e-visas has a negative effect on tourism, say industry stakeholders
Those applying for e-visas must do so at the new online platform operated by IVS-GBS. The platform has replaced the Electronic Travel Authorization (ETA) system that was in place for e-visas earlier.
The outsourcing of the e-visa however, continues to have a negative impact on tourism as the process has become “tedious and complicated,” Nishad Wijetunga, President of the Sri Lanka Association of Inbound Tour Operators (SLAITO) told the Sunday Times. “If we want to encourage more tourists to travel to Sri Lanka we need to keep it simple and have a user friendly simple process at a reasonable cost, and the system we had in place was exactly that.”
Mr Wijetunga said the current process is off putting especially when competing destinations such as Thailand have simplified the process and is giving free visas.
Thailand’s Cabinet this week decided to expand visa free facilities to 93 countries including Sri Lanka effective from June 1. Under the new scheme, visitors can stay in Thailand for up to 60 days, compared to the earlier limit of 30 days. The move to expand visa-free entry is part of a series of new visa promotions announced by the Thai government. The promotions include extended stays for foreign students and digital nomads as well.
Sri Lanka comparatively, only allows visa free entry to seven countries; India, China, Russia, Japan, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia. Nevertheless, even citizens from these countries who are applying for visas online must still pay the “convenience” and “service” fees charged by the outsourcing companies. “Currently, we have seven countries that are supposed to be getting a free visa to Sri Lanka, but it is not free as the service providers fees have to be paid in spite of the visa being free. So the government is sacrificing revenue to encourage tourists but tourists are not getting a free visa,” observed Mr Wijetunga.
Over the past few weeks, an Expert Committee appointed to study the feasibility of granting free visas to tourists has been extensively studying a joint Cabinet paper submitted by the Ministers of Tourism and Foreign Affairs proposing to grant free visas to 67 countries. The committee is expected to convey its decision on the matter very soon, committee member and Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority (SLTDA) Chairman Priantha Fernando said.
Sri Lanka needs to look at what its competitors in the tourism market is doing, said the SLTDA Chairman, who also pointed to Thailand’s decision to expand visa-free entry. He noted that Thailand’s new initiative would give 60 day free visas for tourist from Russia, which is a key tourism market for Sri Lanka. He said Sri Lanka will likely lose its market share of Russian tourists due to such promotions.
Mr Fernando said Sri Lanka is not losing by foregoing visa fees because there is ample evidence that tourists spend far more during their stay in the country when the visa fee is waived. He said the SLTDA had conducted analysis on how the number of tourists from the seven countries that Sri Lanka had extended visa free entry to had increased over the past six months and shown the analysis to authorities. “When you set aside the income that we would generate by visa fees, and look at the total income we have generated by the increased number of tourists coming in, there’s a major difference. So if open it up for more countries, the benefits will be much greater.”
Even if there is resistance to granting visa free entry to 67 countries, Mr Fernando said the possibility of granting free visas for 25 to 30 countries will be considered because prior to the COVID pandemic, Sri Lanka had granted visa free entry to 48 countries from 2018-2019, “so this is not something new.”
The SLTDA Chairman too, said the fees being charged for e-visas from tourists from the seven countries that Sri Lanka had granted visa free entry to is deeply problematic. It might even lead to a situation where the governments of some of these countries take the matter up diplomatically, he warned. “There are many issues and it’s best if these are resolved as soon as possible.”
Meanwhile, tourists also report being subjected to severe inconveniences under the new e-visa system. The Sunday Times received a letter from a foreign traveller, a regular visitor to
Sri Lanka who reports of an unpleasant experience he had recently when he arrived at
the Bandaranaike
International Airport.
He said he had applied for a multiple entry visa in May and received an approval notice from VFS Global a few days later. “It cost several times more than the US$50 single entry for tourists used to under the old system; I put the hefty additional expense down to progress – or at least convenience,” he notes in the letter.
When he arrived in Sri Lanka however, he said immigration officials at the airport had told him that there was no record of his visa approval – even though he was carrying a printed copy of it. He had then been told to complain to VFS Global and pay US$50 for a new single entry visa.
“I called VFS Global and each time was told that there was no problem with my visa application and I would get an email certifying this. No email arrived despite multiple calls,” he says in his letter. The visitor adds that the experience “smacks both of incompetence as well as a clandestine turf war between the immigration officials and whoever approved this not so shiny, expensive
new system.”
The SLTDA Chairman said they too had received similar complaints. He added they had reports that auto-generated messages had been sent to some tourists telling them to reschedule their visit, “which is ridiculous.”
“This type of behaviour should not be allowed. We are giving a very negative impression of the country as if one hand doesn’t know what the other hand is doing,” Mr Fernando stressed.
When contacted, Immigration Controller Harsha Ilukpitiya said some foreign travellers have been lured to fake sites being operated by scammers that have been set up to look like the site to apply for e-visas. “We have told those applying to make sure they access the genuine site,” he said.
An Immigration officer who spoke on grounds of anonymity said when wrong data such as a different passport number, nationality, name, birth date or gender of a passenger is entered, it will not show up on their immigration system. Such mistakes create a mismatch. He said they had encountered such issues and attributed these errors to VFS Global since they are the ones doing the data entry. People also do get lured to scam sites that have been made to look like the real site, and this had happened even before the outsourcing agreement, he noted.
The source however, rejected any suggestion that tourists were being caught in the middle of a “turf war” between Immigration and the outsourcing companies. “If someone’s visa is there in the system, we cannot refuse it. Whatever issues we have with VFS, we need to sort it out with them. We are not going to bring the passengers into the middle.”
The officer also claimed that they have heard reports that the Public Security Ministry is looking at handing over responsibility for processing on-arrival visas back to VFS soon. The source said such a move could create additional complications.
What VFS does is collect data and transfer to immigration. There are fewer problems with this approach when applying for e-visas since this is done prior to arrival and there is time for the visas to be processed and approved or for the person to be informed of any issues, thus giving time for them to be sorted out. The situation changes significantly when issuing visas on arrival, the source pointed out.
“The passenger is here and the process is happening in real time. This will obviously take up some time as the company would need to collect the passenger’s data and transfer the data to Immigration. Immigration would then have to evaluate that data and approve the visa. That approval will then have to be conveyed to VFS who would then inform the passenger. This will take more time and could result in longer queues,” the source opined.
Public Security Minister Tiran Alles said the government is “still studying” the e-visa and on-arrival visa processing matter. He noted that e-visa processing had earlier been hosted on an old platform and the idea is to improve visa processing by having a “world class platform.” The minister said it would be pointless if the government settled on a platform that is “bits and pieces.”
| No show by senior officials: COPF chair raises parliamentary privilege issue Senior officials of the Public Security Ministry and the Department of Immigration and Emigration have been summoned again before Parliament’s Committee on Public Finance (COPF) on Tuesday (4) to continue the committee’s examination into the visa outsourcing agreement. None of the officials turned up for the COPF meeting held on May 14 to discuss the matter, prompting COPF Chair Dr Harsha De Silva to raise a parliamentary privilege issue. | |
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