Shortly after announcing a higher fee for tourist visa – US100, up from the previous US$50 – Sri Lanka’s cabinet on May 6 decided to reverse the move in an apparent bow to pressure from furious travel and tourism professional industry bodies.
The President’s Office said in a statement that it would also maintain the Immigration and Emigration Department as facilitator, reversing the decision to permit VFS Global, a global visa facilitation company, to handle facilitation.
The new fee, which included a service and facilitation charge of US$25 by VFS Global, was implemented on April 17 despite industry players warning that arrivals would be adversely impacted. The crisis came to a head on April 30 when long queues formed at the Bandaranaike International Airport due to a glitch in the system.
The Sri Lanka Association of Inbound Tour Operators, the Travel Agents Association of Sri Lanka, the Sri Lanka Association of Professional Conference Exhibition and Event Organizers, and the Association of Small and Medium Enterprises in Tourism had earlier issued a joint letter urging the government to restore “a competitive and user-friendly visa process through a government-operated website, similar to the previous ETA system, to enable a tourist to obtain the necessary 30 days single-entry visa with ease”, which was deemed crucial to “sustaining the positive momentum” in tourism recovery.
As conflict between the industry and the government spiked over the new visa fee and its implementation, tourism minister Harin Fernando told reporters that the changes were not implemented by him, but by the minister of national security Tiran Alles.
Fernando said: “My view is that we should do away with visas altogether for tourists. Travelling should be as simple as getting off the plane and going out.”
