Unified GCC tourist visas for foreign visitors planned

RIYADH, 11 September — The six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is working on a plan to issue unified tourist visas for foreign visitors.

A recommendation to work out the modalities of issuing unified tourist visas for the six Gulf states has been made by GCC immigration officials, said a statement released by the GCC headquarters here. The plan, once implemented, will boost tourism in the Gulf at a time when tourist and business traffic to the United States and several European destinations have plummeted.

Saudi Arabia alone issued some 6,546 tourist visas last year to foreign tourists in a new move to promote domestic tourism. This is in addition to Gulf nationals who seek domestic or regional trips.

A number of tourists from Japan, the United States, Germany, Spain and Britain have started visiting the Kingdom besides a growing number of Muslim pilgrims, according to a report published recently. The Kingdom’s private sector has already spent some $6.6 billion to set up several tourism companies and projects in a new bid to attract foreign tourists.

The GCC plan will provide foreign tourists to visit the whole Gulf holding a single visa. This will help generate billions of riyals in extra revenue for the Gulf countries.

The statement said that the travel curbs on Gulf nationals visiting the Gulf countries will also be eliminated and they will be able to visit the member states by showing their civil identification cards at the entry points of the airports instead of passports.

A database together with some technical procedures are to be completed before approving civil IDs for travel purposes, said the statement.

The decision to facilitate movement of Gulf nationals comes in line with GCC’s efforts to undertake measures to curb the influx of foreign labor in a campaign to ease their heavy reliance on expatriates and find jobs for their own citizens.