The United Arab Emirates (UAE) last week revised the visa regulations for Nigerians, making it stricter to enter Dubai.
This comes on the heels of a recent video that emerged online last week, showing some African youths, thought to be Nigerian nationals, fighting in a Dubai community and destroying public properties.
Following this public disturbance, the UAE government immediately issued new strict visa regulations for Nigerians traveling into the UAE.
In the updated visa portal, there are three new requirements compulsory for all Nigerian visa applicants to meet.
The three updated requirements are hotel reservation/place of stay in UAE, six-month bank statement, and return flight ticket, these are to be scanned and uploaded to the visa portal.
Travel experts have opined that the decision by the UAE government was taken to minimize the number of persons with criminal intent entering the country.
The new visa rules may reduce the number of travellers from Nigeria travelling into the UAE.
President of the National Association of Nigeria Travel Agencies, Susan Akporiaye told BusinessDay that before now, Dubia used to be one of the easiest destinations to visit because of the relaxed visa rules but with the new requirements, it may be difficult for some people to provide the requirements to process their visas.
According to her, a lot of travellers, especially tourists love to stay with their families and friends and share hotel rooms with friends when they visit Dubai but with the new rules, it means for all the days they will stay in Dubai, they have to pay for a hotel, which can be very expensive.
She said: “Travellers are already paying so much to travel because of the dollar scarcity and high airfares. The new visa rules would double the troubles of travellers as they would have to source for more money to pay for hotels and boost their accounts to be able to visit Dubai.
“When the UAE authority sees that the traffic from Nigeria has reduced, they will have to review these new rules. As it is, Dubai is no longer affordable.”
She further noted that while the UAE government did not specify the amount that should be in people’s accounts to qualify them to get visas, some travel agents said passengers who did not have up to N2.5 million in their bank accounts were given visas in recent times.
A travel agent, Abigail Ude said “With the new visa rules, I don’t think I would be visiting Dubai anytime soon. This is because whenever I visit, I have friends in Dubai, specifically in Sharjah that I stay with. This helps me reduce expenses I would have incurred paying for a hotel.”
Experts in the travel sector also said tourists may shift to Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, and other tourist destinations with more relaxed visa requirements
Ude said her friends have also changed travel plans for Christmas to Dubai and are looking for African destinations with relaxed rules and nice tourist attractions.
