In what is seen as two contradictory scenarios at home and abroad, Saudi Arabia and the neighboring countries are accelerating their pace to bring about a qualitative leap in attracting visitors from all over the world by facilitating the procedures for obtaining entry visas to their lands, while Kuwait appears stagnant or rather swims against the current especially in light of the recent measures to stop all kinds of tourist and commercial visas, even visas to join a family, as well as the failure to develop the mechanism for this type of visa for many years.
While obtaining a tourist entry visa to Kuwait requires long and complicated procedures, and obtaining it electronically is limited to specific nationalities, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has put in place what it calls a ‘digital embassy’ specialized in granting the visa electronically, without the need for the applicant to visit personally in addition to giving a visa for one year, multiple trips, unlike Kuwait, which limits the duration of the visa to three months.
While expatriates in Kuwait are currently unable to obtain visas for their children who were born outside the country to return with their mothers, the new procedures in Saudi Arabia allow obtaining a visa within minutes, whether for tourism or Umrah purposes.
The same applies to tourist visas, which are very few in Kuwait for a variety of reasons, including the absence of any efforts to attract tourists within a comprehensive plan of action, while the picture is completely different in Saudi Arabia, where it is now possible to visit the Kingdom for tourism and perform Umrah at the same time.
The new procedures in Saudi Arabia allow the applicant to request for visa electronically through the official visa platform approved on the website of the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs (the digital embassy).
In the UAE, too, steps to facilitate visa and residency procedures, which have been in place for a long time, are continuing, as the authorities finally allowed foreigners of all nationalities to apply for a multi-entry tourist visa valid for five years from the date of issuance, without requiring a guarantor or host in the state, provided that he stays in the state for a period not exceeding 90 days in one year.
