Travel companies in bother after Germany denies visa for Vietnam’s new passports

The brand new passports, which Vietnam started issuing on July 1, haven’t been acknowledged in Germany but and their holders can’t apply for visas because the passports lack info on native land, the German Embassy in Vietnam stated Thursday.

Germany’s motion has dealt a direct blow to travel companies that manage outbound excursions. Germany, together with France and Italy, are the principle vacationer locations in Europe.

Pham Duy Nghia, director of Hanoi-based tour operator Vietfoot Travel, stated his firm has been closely affected by the German authorities’s announcement.

“Presently, we now have canceled excursions to Europe for dozens of vacationers holding the brand new passports and the injury may be very severe,” Nghia informed VnExpress Worldwide Thursday afternoon.

Nghia stated he was most fearful that the German authorities’s determination may have a domino impact, resulting in different international locations within the Schengen space to impose comparable restrictions on the brand new Vietnamese passports.

He hoped Vietnamese authorities would rapidly work with the German authorities to cope with the problem, because the outbound tourism market has simply began displaying indicators of restoration after greater than two years of the pandemic disaster.

Ngo Van Thoa, director of the HCMC-based Pan American Travel Firm, stated his firm has struggled following the German authorities’s announcement.

His firm had organized a tour sure for Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Luxembourg that was scheduled to depart Thursday.

As a result of the tour had a number of vacationers utilizing the brand new Vietnamese passport, the corporate needed to make last-minute adjustments within the itinerary for the affected prospects to keep away from the potential of their being denied entry into Germany.

This meant that the corporate needed to change flight tickets and lodging on the final minute, too.

Thoa stated each week his firm organizes two excursions to Europe with costs starting from VND50-100 million ($2,142-4,284).

German authorities have stated they can not discover info concerning the native land primarily based solely on one’s private identification quantity as proven on their passports. It might imply that they would want to confirm an individual’s id manually with a seven-page checklist, and never everybody has the checklist.

A consultant of the immigration division underneath the Ministry of Public Safety on Thursday stated the Ministry of International Affairs would focus on the problem additional with representatives from Germany.

Based on a Wednesday announcement on the web site of the German Embassy in Vietnam, holders of Vietnam’s new passports with the darkish blue cowl as an alternative of the standard inexperienced ones, will be unable to use for a C or D class visa to enter Germany.

A Schengen short-stay visa to Germany, generally known as a C-type visa, permits guests to remain as much as 90 days whereas these planning to remain longer than 90 days within the nation want to use for the D-type visa.

German authorities have additionally warned that holders of the brand new passports who’ve already been granted a visa should not travel to Germany as they may be denied entry on the border.