India looks to expand visa-on-arrival to 15 more countries

The Tourism Ministry is in talks with the Ministries of Home Affairs and External Affairs to extend the visa-on-arrival facility at more airports like Bangalore and Hyderabad to visitors from about 15 countries.

Currently, the visa-on-arrival scheme is available at four international airports – Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, and Kolkata. It covers citizens of over 11 countries including Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, Vietnam, Cambodia, the Philippines and Myanmar.

The visa-on-arrival scheme has been a huge success and contributed to increase in the number of tourists from these countries, Gupta said.

According to a FICCI Knowledge Paper on Inbound tourism, the number of travel visa on arrival tourists registered a growth of 54.6 per cent as compared to the same period in 2012.