Six Gulf nations will soon offer a “unified GCC visa” allowing travelers to seamlessly jump from nation to nation much like the Schengen area in Europe.
“Unified GCC Visa” Will Allow Seamless Travel Between Six Gulf Nations
Six nations are planning to introduce a unified visa for foreign travelers that will be valid for at least 30 days. Those include:
- Bahrain
- Kuwait
- Oman
- Saudi Arabia
- Qatar
- United Arab Emirates (UAE)
While no start date has been announced, the visa is expected to launch by the end of 2024.
As Fahd Hamidaddin, CEO of the Saudi Tourism Authority, explained:
“If we want to get the Taylor Swifts of the world, we can collaborate, with a view to an Arabian tour.”
There is hope that this will spur tourism across the region and particularly make these nations more attractive ports of call to cruise lines (officials are hoping for a “big shift from Med to Red”). Currently, each of the six nations requires a separate visa or clearance procedure, even for day trips.
No costs have been announced associated with that visa. Currently, a tourist e-visa to Saudi Arabia costs about $131 for US citizens while US citizens can travel to UAE states like Dubai or Abu Dhabi on a visa-free basis.
Fun Fact: Dubai is the size of Jacksonville, Florida but has more hotel rooms than Las Vegas.
While this new visa system has been described as similar to the Schengen Area in Europe, I would guess that there will still be formal border checks when traveling between nations, unlike travel between European states.
CONCLUSION
It is an exciting time of change in the Middle East. Qatar broke tourist records last year and Saudi Arabia is investing $800 billion in tourism infrastructure. These six nations believe there is great potential in tourism and in working together to streamline access. As long as the price for a visa is reasonable and easy to apply for and receive approval for, I think this is a very positive move.
The unified visa will not come with a waiver of fixed government passport control checks to fly between all the GCC countries, and so it will fall short of being like the Schengen area. The unified visa — and this isn’t the first time there has been a sort of shared visa recognition among some of these countries — may be sort of akin to the Schengen visa, but that won’t mean a Schengen area type legal regime across all of the GCC anytime soon.
I hope this happens by Thanksgiving — I’m doing Doha, Manama, and a day trip into Dammam.
@James … how about the camels ?
I am doing exactly that trip at the end of May. It was worth the $100+ for a Saudi e-visa for the day trip from Manama (I’m excited about the Kind Fahd Causeway as well as visiting Dammam), but no question the trip would be much more streamlined without having to have visas for both Bahrain and KSA. But I agree that border controls are unlikely to be relaxed any time soon.
Unless and until these countries stop locking up and torturing domestic political dissidents, stop taking a harsh approach to criticism of the rulers of these countries, stop weighing the testimony of native males more highly than that of foreign female visitors and expat workers, and stop with harsh punishments for drunkenness and “intoxication”, I would be reluctant to consider a cruise along GCC ports to be akin to a cruise along the EU and Schengen countries’ ports.
25 years ago the Saudi embassy diplomats and their relatives in DC would keep telling me in a private capacity that the country would open more and more to foreign tourists for non-religious-tourist visits. Maybe now it’s finally going to happen in a much more substantial way as they want to eat into the business the UAE and Qatar have been gettting and have a huge population of underemployed young adult males, but Saudi Arabia is still a ticking time bomb in that way and others. That they are even willing to kill political dissidents in NATO countries is a sign that in some ways they may be more problematic now than they were even before — especially now where they know they have impunity courtesy of their willingness to engage in geostrategic alliance blackmail games against the US.
Will red sea cruises include a stop at the port of Hudaidah and a tour aboard the Galaxy Leader?
Yemen’s a fascinating place but it’s not part of the GCC.
I don’t understand the fun fact. Jacksonville is really big. It’s comparable in size to all of Luxembourg, and actually quite a bit larger than Dubai. Double Hong Kong. Triple Singapore. Most of the iconic Vegas hotels aren’t even located in the city limits of Las Vegas.