Count Hours, Not Days to Get a Visa to Azerbaijan

Visiting Azerbaijan got easier on Wednesday when the State Agency on Public Services and Social Innovations launched a program for the issuance of electronic visas within three hours.

The launch of what is being called the “urgent e-Visa option” comes on the heels of Azerbaijan having heavily relaxed visa procedures last year when it instituted the electronic one-stop-shop known as the Azerbaijan Service and Assessment Network (ASAN for short, which means “easy” in Azerbaijani). ASAN provides more than 230 services, including birth, death and marriage registration; identity cards; passports; driver licenses; real estate records and visa processing for foreigners.

“Since the introduction of the electronic visa issuance system through ASAN on December 16, 2016, around 170,000 foreigners have gotten an e-Visa to visit Azerbaijan,” ASAN Service PR department head Anar Huseynov told Caspian News.

A heavy and unexpected influx of foreign visitors can be thanked for making travel to the Caspian region country even easier, however.

According to Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism, around 1.2 million visitors entered the country during the first half of 2017, a 24 percent increase compared to the same period last year.

“The main reason behind the launch of the urgent e-Visa service was the constant increase and influx of foreigners to Azerbaijan. Although just a day passed since we launched the service, there is a huge interest among foreigners,” Huseynov told Caspian News on Thursday. “The ASAN system allowed for visas to be issued within 3 working days, but now the time gap is even shorter. A key advantage of the service is that urgent visas can be processed regardless of the weekends and days off,” he explained. 

The urgent e-Visa option is predicated on the same terms and conditions as the three-day ASAN electronic visa issuing application. Foreigners and stateless persons go through the same process:  apply online, pay the required fee electronically, and download the e-Visa.

Visas are issued for a single entry, for a maximum stay of 30 days for most eligible countries. Citizens and stateless persons residing in 94 countries across the world, including the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Brazil, and China are all eligible. Groups ranging from two to 10 people may apply using a single application and email address.

The ASAN Service has deployed staff to Baku’s Heydar Aliyev International Airport under a pilot experiment, to help incomers figure out immediately any discrepancies within their documents and verify eligibility for getting an urgent e-Visa. 

The new visa application option comes just in time for the most awaited international fashion event in the country’s capital city. The Baku Shopping Festival kicks off in October and is widely anticipated in light of the success of the first-ever festival of its kind, held from April 10 - May 10. The Culture and Tourism Ministry is expecting between 200,000 and 250,000 foreign visitors for the festival.