Tourists shocked by doubled visa fees in Uganda

Clearly not to be outdone by the Kenyan folly which now demands Visa in advance, to be applied and paid for via a website with the processing taking at least a week, hence ruling out any last minute b

Clearly not to be outdone by the Kenyan folly which now demands Visa in advance, to be applied and paid for via a website with the processing taking at least a week, hence ruling out any last minute bookings or even cross border visits, Uganda also shot itself in the proverbial tourism foot doubling visa fees from US$50US to US$100.

Most Ugandan High Commissions and Embassies are still blissfully unaware of the changes and their respective websites continue to show the fee of US$50 per person, yet on arrival the tourists are told to cough up twice as much.

A significant market segment in Europe and North America these days falls into the last minute booking category, and the loss of business for Kenya, when the grace period expires, is thought to immediately run into the millions of US dollars.

There is still no clarification available from Kenya about a change in modalities (if any) to obtain a common tourist Visa which costs US$100 to visit the three countries of Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya. This Visa was up to now available on arrival in any of the three countries on request but no known e-procedure has been established for clients traveling to Kenya a first point of entry.

Asked one tourism stakeholder in Nairobi: โ€˜The three country Visa one only gets when asking for it. To do that one has to be at immigration in JKIA. How will a traveler get there however if they are in two months time denied boarding for lack of Visa and yet they want to visit the other two countries also which do not have the advance regulations? I donโ€™t know how this will work. Will we not push travelers to rather fly to Entebbe or Kigali instead of Nairobi? There they get their Visa on arrival and can ask for the common tourist Visa but here in Kenya? This is a mess because those who made the new rules did not consult and failed to notice these loopholesโ€™.

It is obvious that the authorities, as often before, instituted measures without thinking through the logistics, especially vis a vis the common tourist Visa, nor for that matter the issue of the present transit Visa arrangements, which allow tourists from Tanzania to enter Kenya for the purpose to traveling to Jomo Kenyatta International Airport to fly back home.

Those affected in the tourism industry with cooler heads, have already called upon the authorities to clarify on these issues and rectify the blatant oversights which emerged already on day one of these changes coming into effect.

โ€˜It is just like with park fees or gorilla tracking fees. If those are changed the tourism industry needs longer term advance notice to reflect these changes in contractual arrangements. Our government should be sensitive to such issues and not take such decisions almost overnight. They make us all look like fools really like yesterday when it happened and I had no idea what was going onโ€™ volunteered one Ugandan tourism stakeholder while another on social media posted: โ€˜but seriously don’t we all struggle enough to get tourists to Uganda? soon I have no ideas any more too. And why always these unexpected increases so that we can’t even warn our clientsโ€™

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Avatar of Linda Hohnholz

Linda Hohnholz

Editor in chief for eTurboNews based in the eTN HQ.

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