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Easing visa policies is the first step to take towards attracting more visitors and growing the economy, and e-visas work especially well for smaller countries like Azerbaijan that lack a global network of embassies.
Online visa issuing system has been launched according to a decree of the President of Azerbaijan, the head of Tourism Association of Azerbaijan Nahid Bagirov told Trend.
According to him, tourists wishing to visit Azerbaijan can obtain a visa online. Before tourists faced problems while obtaining visas, and they had to apply to the embassies of Azerbaijan in their countries.
“If a tourists living in any German town wanted to obtain a visa for visiting Azerbaijan, he had to go to the Embassy of Azerbaijan in Germany, that created difficulties,” Bagirov said.
Such cases were leading to the fact that tourists refused to visit Azerbaijan. That is unacceptable for Azerbaijan, the head of the association noted.
“The online visa issuing system has already been started. This means that tourists are not visiting any of the Embassy will be able to obtain a visa online by sending a copy of his passport to travel companies without visiting any embassy” Bagirov said.
Tourists may obtain a visa in online regime within 14 working days, the chairman of the association noted.
According to Bagirov, online visa issuing will increase the number of tourists visiting Azerbaijan.
(c)2013 Trend News Agency (Baku, Azerbaijan). Distributed by MCT Information Services.
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Tags: azerbaijan, visas
Photo credit: A tourist takes an Azerbaijani and his granddaughter, at the man's request. The man continues to offer him a cup of tea in typical Azerbaijani hospitality. Pierre / Flickr