Europe Visa Bottlenecks Push UAE Residents to Rethink Travel Plans
Photo Credit: Tourists in a boat and alongside the shore of Copenhagen's Nyhavn canal. Skift
Skift Take
The visa queue will clear. The question is whether leisure demand comes back with it.
Visa applications for Europe from the UAE are up nearly 10% year-on-year, according to VFS Global, even as residents report limited appointment availability at several Schengen visa application centers.
Alena Iakina, founder and COO of AI-powered visa management company Visarun.ai, estimates the current appointment wait at two to three months. “The slots are basically full for the most popular destinations. Spain, Greece, France, Germany, Italy, and even Poland and Norway are all nearly booked out for the summer,” she said.
The crunch has two layers. Securing an appointment is the first bottleneck. Once that appointment is made and documents submitted, Schengen visa processing adds another 10 to 15 working days, according to Sharel Joseph, global visa lead at Akbar Travels. This means travelers who haven’t already started the process are effectively locked out of peak summer travel t
