Dubai visas are insane

Subtitled: How obtaining a dual-entry Dubai Visa for a Canadian citizen can promote premature aging, food molding, no cell phone service and take years off your life (In all honesty, I have no idea if it can mold food or mess with your cell signal, but it was a horrible enough process that I wouldn’t be surprised if it does).

So, a little background: last year the United Arab Emirates and Canada got into a little bit of a squabble because the UAE wanted permission to land more flights in Canada per week.  Canada, wanting to keep the business with Air Canada, turned them down.  So the UAE fired back with the ever-popular “Oh yeah?  Well, your Momma wears combat boots!”   And when that didn’t solve anything they added “and now your people need visas to enter our country as of Jan 1, 2011!  Take that, Syrupsuckers! ” *

The big catch is that they seemed to forget to set up the process to which one obtains said visa.  Cue December, 2010, and nobody has any idea yet what the hell’s going on and mass panic is ensuing.  Canadians with pre-booked pre-paid non-refundable vacations are wetting themselves wondering if they’re even going to be able to enter the UAE at all.  Dollar signs are flashing before their eyes,  and agents are breathing into paper bags.  With just days to spare we finally get word that you have to obtain the visa in advance, cannot get one on arrival, and have to get one issued through a company registered in the UAE, such as your hotel or tour operator.  Seems simple enough, right?

The problem with this is that there are a whole lot of loopholes.  And no infrastructure set up to deal with these loopholes.

This is where I enter the picture.  My case was this:  the clients booked a cruise starting in Dubai, leaving the UAE and stopping in Oman, then returning to Dubai and spending an additional week there before flying on.  Knowing we would have to arrange the visa with the hotel we pre-booked and paid in full for our post-cruise accommodations and then began the lengthy “email the hotel in Dubai” process.

Now let me just say as agents we don’t normally deal with visas.   We normally just hand you the number of the consulate or a visa service and wipe our hands of it (with a smile, of course), but in this case, since we had to get in touch with the hotel directly, I wanted to help my clients out and emailed them myself.  I’m an idiot.

It only took about a week of emails – since Dubai is 12 hours ahead of us and nobody works on Fridays and Saturdays, everything takes a long time – to learn that my passengers would need two visas, one for their original entry and one for their return after Oman.  Obtaining one visa is a pretty simple process, you just fill out a form, send copies of your passport, credit card, photos, your first born, etc. and they email you back a visa.  Simple.  This I could have done immediately without problem.  The BIG GIANT CATCH that cost me sleep, some of my natural hair colour and a layer of nail polish from all the frantic emails I typed is that you can only get the second visa after showing the exit stamp from the first one.  You cannot hold two active UAE visas at the same time.  This meant my clients would need to somehow send their cancelled visa to the hotel (from the ship?) and get the second one in 5-7 business days, which they didn’t have, since they were only leaving the UAE for 3 days.  Was this even possible?

The UAE consulate never responded to any of my 47 emails, an equal number of voicemails, and the two times I did manage to get a person they hung up on me.  I’m still waiting to hear back.  The cruise line just gives you a random email and tells you they won’t help you.  Over the next two months I emailed countless companies and sent so many messages to the hotel in Dubai they finally got fed up and stopped returning my emails. I found two companies that could issue the two visas, but only if you booked all your hotels and transfers with them, which would cost my clients a fortune, as they’d already paid for all that.  Every time I got any sort of answer, the next message/call would disprove it.  There was no consistancy, and the visa info on the internet (yes, I resulted in Googling) actually warns you that the visa information provided even by reputable companies is notoriously unreliable.  Fan-frealing-tastic.

My clients were incredibly calm duing all of this, and continue to be a dream to work with.  I personally hit the full-on panic point a good two weeks before they did.   I was just watching the clock tick down, and looking at this very expensive booking and thinking “what if they don’t get a visa in time?”  Insurance doesn’t cover not traveling due to lack of visa – that’s your fault and the insurance comapnies aren’t paying anything to cover your ass.  Not that I blame them there.  But every possible worst case scenario was flashing before my eyes.

We were down to the wire.  It was literally the last possible Thursday and if my clients didn’t submit the paperwork for the Visa by Tuesday we were royally screwed. That was it.  No more second chances.  About now I’m mainlining antacids and checking my email every ten seconds.  And then it popped up, as if sent from an angel: a company affiliated with the cruise line (whom I’d already emailed twice to no avail and had only tried again as a Hail Mary pass) said they normally require you to book land accommodation with them, but would gladly help me out if I had been unable to obtain the Visa any other way.  Hot damn.  There was a God.  Or Allah.  Or anything.  I instantly emailed back, asking for the paperwork to fill out, then nervously waited for a response while they were closed for the weekend, and on Sunday submitted all the forms.  I had expected to get a response the next day saying there was something wrong – that had happened on every other email I’d sent during this process, why would this be any different?  Tuesday rolls around and I’m just becoming convinced there’s something wrong when BAM!  In my inbox miraculously appears four perfect Dubai Visas, each numbered in order they were to be used, and a sheet of instructions on how to get a cruise Visa.  Life was good again.  Bunnies and rainbows appeared everywhere.

Here’s the thing: if someone had sent me that sheet of instructions two months ago, none of the panic would have happened.  I’m not insane to assume the company that issued the Visas, as well as the Canadian Consulate in Dubai, the UAE Embassy in Ottawa and the cruise line would have had this form.  Thousands of Canadians cruise in and out of Dubai every year.   I was one step away from petitioning the Canadian government to just let more Emirates flights land at Pearson, all the while thinking I was going to be fired when the clients sued my company for the CAD$20 000.00 they had lost.  Come on UAE, get your act together.  If you don’t simplify this process, you’re going to loose much needed tourist dollars, and only be able to build skyscrapers that rank as the Fourth tallest in the world. And you might have to downsize man made island chain shaped like all the continents of the world so it just resembles Panagea.  The horror.

My story had a happy ending.  Yay. But just consider this a heads up if you’re planning on cruising in and out of Dubai.  Start the visa process as early as possible, book your hotel accommodations with a Dubai-based tour operator who can issue your Visa for you, and if all else fails, ask me for the instructions and I’ll send them your way.  You can bet they’re always going to be close at hand for me from here on out.  If that doesn’t work, I recommend Prozac.  And please stay away from sharp objects for the first little while.

*I’m paraphrasing.  It was probobly written in much more formal language.

Related posts:

1. Insurance – why you want it, but don’t.
2. The Importance of Travel Agents
3. WTF?!! Weird questions I’ve been asked at work
4. Zen and the Art of the Moneybelt

Tags: agent, cruise, Dubai, panic, Prozac, stamp, stress, trouble, UAE, Visa