Egypt Visa Costs & Requirements Published

By: Ben Schlappig

Published: March 23, 2015

21 comments

Last week I wrote about how as of May 1, 2015, Egypt will stop issuing visas on arrival, with the only exclusion being for those traveling in tour groups. This comes at a rather unfortunate time for Egypt, given that Egypt is trying to double their number of tourists over the next few years, and this certainly won’t help with that.

Pyramids-Egypt

The biggest downside for me is that I transit Cairo quite a bit, given how many cheap premium fares are published out of there.

Anyway, it looks like we finally have some more information about the Egyptian visa requirements. Both the Egyptian Embassy in Washington, DC and the US Department of State have published information about this.

You can download the instructions for applying for an Egyptian visa and download the actual visa application. It looks applications take up to 10 days to be processed, and I don’t see an option for expediting the service.

Here are the costs that will be associated with acquiring an Egyptian visa:

Egypt-Visa

The pricing of these visas is quite interesting. They charge more than double as much for a transit visa as they do for a tourist visa, which I guess makes sense if they’re trying to promote tourism.

It’s still not totally clear to me how long a multiple entry tourist visa will last, and ultimately if you can use a tourist visa for a transit as well. In other words, if you get a multiple entry tourist visa and actually visit Egypt, can you use it for a transit later, or is that not possible?

Bottom line

This certainly makes booking cheap premium fares out of Cairo more challenging, though certainly not impossible. I guess I better get started on the visa sooner rather than later, assuming it’s valid for several years and transits without visa aren’t possible anymore.

Does this new visa requirement impact your plans to travel to or transit Egypt?

(Tip of the hat to Rapid Travel Chai)

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Eli Guest

October 7, 2015, 11:31 pm

http://travel.state.gov/content/passports/en/country/egypt.html

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No Name Guest

March 25, 2015, 12:45 pm

The problem with tour groups tourists are that most of the them are on all inclusive deals which means very little money reaches Egyptians outside the Hotel resorts. Kind of what happens in the Maldives with every visitor staying in tourist islands. Article about it from a English website in UAE http://www.thenational.ae/business/travel-tourism/all-inclusive-deals-hit-tourist-spending-outside-sharm-el-sheikh-hotels Individual tourists leave behind a lot more money in the local economy, hopefully the Egyptians will find a middle road to their security issue's soon before they end up doing even more damage to their economy.

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A. S. Guest

March 24, 2015, 8:41 am

I still think that this will eventually be reverted. The Egypt Tourism Authority, the hotel syndicate, and the Chamber of Commerce are all lobbying the government to either undo this or at least allow individuals (FIT travelers) to also have their visa issued by local travel agencies. The other option they are looking into is to issue e-visas online like many other countries. It would allow pre-screening (which the government wants) as well as be practical (which everyone else wants). Cost was never the issue, by the way, since "visa on arrival" also used to cost USD 15 at the airport (it had recently increased to 25, I think). @Abdel Rahim: Comparing the US procedures to Egypt's is like comparing apples to oranges. I do think the US procedures are excessive, especially since people have to face many physical and emotional hardships during the process, including humiliation. That said, it is entirely clear to me that the US needs to have a more difficult and tighter system than a country like Egypt, because people from all over the world are trying to migrate to the US and not to Egypt. Egypt does have a migration problem from sub-Saharan Africa, but it's pretty limited to that (and only now also refugees from Yemen and Syria). The point is that if the US ever offered visa on arrival (or an easier system) its population would swell to 2 billion in one year. :) Here in Brazil, for example, the procedure to get a US visa is identical to what you described and still there are lines every day in front of the consulate in São Paulo (I live 5 blocks away). It's ultimately a question of supply and demand, if you know what I mean, and the demand for the US is off the charts.

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jeff Guest

March 24, 2015, 7:40 am

It says May 1, 2014 - is this the right chart, or a typo? (it is 2015 last time I looked)

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Miles Down Under Guest

March 24, 2015, 4:51 am

Its more the hassle of having to get a visa that is going to cause people to be put off. Yes, people from some countries don't get visa free travel to a number of places. But for those that do, they are in the mindset of not needing to get visas.

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