Flight booked: tick. Fully vaccinated: tick. Visa: not so fast.
With international travel restrictions related to Covid-19 having largely fallen away, many South Africans have booked and paid for business and leisure trips overseas, only to discover their visas will probably not be issued before their departure date.
Otto de Vries, CEO of the Association of Southern African Travel Agents (Asata), said many members had alerted the association that SA passport holders were finding it very difficult to secure appointments with third party agencies which deal with applications for Schengen visas on behalf of some consulates, throwing their travel plans into turmoil.
On Friday, De Vries sent a letter to Riina Kionka, EU ambassador to SA, on behalf of the country’s travel industry, urging her to highlight this “growing problem” with her EU colleagues in the country.
“Potential travellers to the Netherlands have been advised there are no slots for visa appointments through VFS Global for April, May, June and July,” he said.
Our understanding is that the issues sit with the visa facilitation centres appointed by the different EU countries to manage the applications
— Otto de Vries, CEO of the Association of Southern African Travel Agents
“Slots for Greece at the Global Visa Centre in Cape Town are also not available until May.
“Our understanding is that the issues sit with the visa facilitation centres appointed by the different EU countries to manage the applications.
“They are clearly under-resourced and there are not enough slots. Once the applications are submitted, the actual processing is running smoothly. The bottleneck appears to be the visa facilitation centres,” he said.
De Vries said the centres had dramatically scaled down when the Covid-19 pandemic halted international travel in 2020, but appeared to have failed to ramp up their operations sufficiently to accommodate the increase in bookings to European destinations in particular.
“This despite the travel industry talking about pent-up demand for some time,” he said.
Lauren Cohen of Johannesburg booked a leisure trip to the Netherlands departing in early June, but fears her visa may not be issued in time.
“I tried to make appointments at the Netherlands visa application centres, run by VFS Global, in Johannesburg, Durban, Pretoria and Cape Town on Wednesday but the earliest I could get was a slot in June, two days after I am due to depart,” she said.
When she asked for help via the Netherlands visa application Whatsapp line, she received this response: “New appointment slots should be added on a regular basis so keep checking for new possibilities. I wish you good luck!”
Cohen intends to try her luck as a walk-in at the VFS Global office in Rivonia, Gauteng next week.
Lindiwe (not her real name) is due to fly to Amsterdam to visit her sister on May 2 and has been trying without success to book an appointment at a VFS Global Netherlands visa application centre, only to find “no appointments available” in their Durban, Cape Town and Johannesburg offices.
“I live in Gqeberha, which doesn’t have a Netherlands visa application centre,” she said, “so I have to fly to one of the main cities to do the application.”
She finally found a slot in Cape Town, but it was within a week of her departure date, which is risky.
Lindiwe said it appeared the site can’t cope with the number of applicants and crashes frequently.
“They are only open a few days a week, and only until midday, so no wonder there is a backlog.”
She may have no choice but to postpone her trip, which will be costly.
“I didn’t expect this,” she said. “I hadn’t heard anything about visa backlogs, so I thought applying six weeks before my departure would be enough time. Clearly not.”
Advice: If your chosen destination does not require you to submit proof of your return air ticket with your visa application, don’t book your flights until you have your visa and passport in hand. Alternatively, pay extra for a “flexible” ticket which will allow you to change the dates at no or little cost.
CONTACT WENDY: E-mail: consumer@knowler.co.za; Twitter: @wendyknowler; Facebook: wendyknowlerconsumer
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