Fwiw, I was searching for united states or american before looking for US. Just got Visas to visit Brazil, Liberia, and Ghana, so I know the process. All the sites for this info suck and you have a good opportunity to make something useful.
Great job on the website! I literally had the same idea a few months back - even thought of a similar title (DoINeedAFuckingVisa.com). Never materialized when I realized just how complex the immigration rules are.
But you know what they say about ideas and execution. Good on you for executing :)
This is awesome! You should also add the ability to post comments about visas and the visa process, since in my experience, some border crossing agents try to overcharge you and you can get them to lower their price simply by stating that you "know" they should be charging x not y. An on the ground report of the visa process can be invaluable next to the usually inaccurate/out-of-date info available through the official channels.
I'm thinking about this, but one of my motivations for doing it was to have only primary-sourced, up-to-date information - there's so much rumour and third-hand information on forums when you search for visa requirements, and I wanted to do something more authoritative and trustworthy.
But it could work as long as the comments are clearly separated from the "official" information.
Or maybe just add a "report an error" option. I've tested the countries I've visited recently and others have probably done the same, so if you see that your official information is contradicted by all (or many) of your users, you can raise a flag and manually check if your official information is still up to date.
A quick rule of thumb for European Union member states: no visas are needed for any EU citizen to go any other EU country (as a tourist). It shows that I need a visa to go from Romania to the UK or Sweden (that is false, Romania, the UK and Sweden are all EU members).
It should be saying "no information available" for those, as I haven't done the research on the transitional arrangements for Romania and Bulgaria that might be in effect (such as in the UK) until 2014.
That is correct, work visas are restricted, tourist visas however are not required and I am not aware of any such requirement between any two EU member states. I haven't used my passport in years, I use my Romanian ID card whenever I travel in the EU (and it is my understanding that any EU citizen can travel - for business or pleasure - within the EU without visas or even a passport).
I'll add that information shortly - for things like EU citizens travelling in the EU, I try to put a little more information than just "no tourist visa is required".
I am not a travel agent, but I believe even non-EU citizens don't need a visa to travel within the EU - you may only need a visa to enter a EU country.
Yes, I'm sure. Your ID (not necessarily a passport) is still checked at the border of the Schengen space (at the entry point) but you don't need a passport or a visa of any kind. You just show your Romanian ID to the customs officer and then enter the country.
There's a document issued by the Romanian Ministry of Internal Affairs: http://www.mai.gov.ro/Documente/Utile/Calatoria%20in%20Europ... (unfortunately they didn't bother writing it in anything other than Romanian) - it clearly states that Romanians do not need visas for any EU country (but they still need either a passport or an ID card).
You might want some country aliases; since the first items in the drop-down had full country names in them, I expected to have to type "united states", not "US".
Works great, otherwise. Seems handy as a standalone service; it'd help even more if integrated into a travel site like Hipmunk.
It's also grammatically incorrect. I am citizen of the United States of America, but an American citizen. The correct demonym in English for a citizen of the United States is American.
This is great and is certainly something I'll use as I'm exploring summer travel options. One thing I would love to see though, is a simple "yes" or "no" at the front of the sentence. I had to read "US citizens do not require a visa to visit Argentina." a couple of times to make sure I had it right.
Yes! Simple and useful for me (I travel a lot, was looking up this kind of info yesterday). I would change up the background since its a bit distracting. Congrat on shipping!
One small thing you might want to consider adding is geo-ip identification of the user to detect which country they are visiting from, and default the country selected in "I'm a _ citizen" to that country.
Yes, and it was difficult to figure out what to put after "American" and "United States" both turned up no results, but agree auto-fill would make this an easy go-to for visa information.
Delta used to have an awesome frontend for Timatic (the system that all of the airlines use for determining their own liability in visa requirement issues) that I used exclusively. Sadly, it seems they've removed it from their new site.
I was able to find a similar offering[1] for free on Gulf Air's site, though.
A nice frontend to Timatic would be awesome, but I suspect that the licensing is too pricey...
Hypothetically, I wonder if there would be legal issues with running a bot to scrape data from Gulf Air's page. They don't seem to have a ToS which prohibits it, as far as I can tell; and I would expect the data itself to be non-copyrightable.
I haven't looked closely at it, but if Timatic are held liable for the accuracy and ultimately responsible (assuming litigation), it might be justified.
Neat! I wonder if you could crowd-source some of the missing data. I tested it with "I'm a US Citizen travelling to Macau." but didn't get any result. The US state department web site http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_955.html#en... says no visa is required.
Actually, I'm putting data in for Nepal right as we speak. And Irish citizens don't need a visa before arriving in Nepal, they can get one at the border.
One UX suggestion: don't center the text in the drop downs. It makes your eyes jump around when scanning the list, and has made me look past a country I was looking for.
How about just displaying the result below as soon as the selection is changed? Having me click a button, and then click 'Back' to try a new combo, is annoying.
I know I'm required to have visa for a bunch of places but not sure which ones, would be really cool to see given your nationality all the countries for which you are required to have visa.
btw, I'm Colombian, we don't need visa for Russia and Turkey (Data not available yet in your DB).
Interesting project. Outside of interface choices, are there any differences between this and some of the existing offerings like DoYouNeedVisa[1] or VisaMapper[2] (which is crowdsourced and includes the very important information of whether visa are available at the border)?
The first one of those has some rather questionable information, so I wouldn't plan your trip based on what it says. For example, it claims Australians can get a visa on arrival in East Timor, which isn't true.
I've not come across visamapper.com, but it looks good.
Is there a way to list the visa requirements for a US citizen? (just a simple list of the other countries and whether or not a visa is required to visit those countries)
Thank you so much! Your site saved us big time! My girlfriend is from one of the visa waiver countries, and she is coming to the U.S. to visit me in June. And guess what? We have never heard of the ESTA requirement until today. I wish online travel ticket agency could be more specific and tell us all the required documents. Does anyone know what would happen if you forgot or didn't know about ESTA?
yeah, that's crazy. luckily i had an old passport with a us visa (for complicated reasons) that was still valid. otherwise, they wouldn't have let me on the plane...
So about a year ago, I created Visamapper(www.visamapper.com) for the same purpose.I ended up crowdsourcing the data. Slightly different take on the interface as your project. But I have to say, I'm just a little jealous because visamapper didn't get any attention on HN :-). Anyways, Nice job with the design. Small nitpick: The list of countries at the bottom is unreadable with the current font color.
163 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 209 ms ] threadBut you know what they say about ideas and execution. Good on you for executing :)
But it could work as long as the comments are clearly separated from the "official" information.
Switzerland is also Schengen so you don't even need a passport to enter from other Schengen members (which unfortunately excludes the UK)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Area
http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/home-affairs/what-we-do/policies/bor...
There's a document issued by the Romanian Ministry of Internal Affairs: http://www.mai.gov.ro/Documente/Utile/Calatoria%20in%20Europ... (unfortunately they didn't bother writing it in anything other than Romanian) - it clearly states that Romanians do not need visas for any EU country (but they still need either a passport or an ID card).
Works great, otherwise. Seems handy as a standalone service; it'd help even more if integrated into a travel site like Hipmunk.
One small thing you might want to consider adding is geo-ip identification of the user to detect which country they are visiting from, and default the country selected in "I'm a _ citizen" to that country.
I was able to find a similar offering[1] for free on Gulf Air's site, though.
A nice frontend to Timatic would be awesome, but I suspect that the licensing is too pricey...
[1] http://www.gulfair.com/English/info/prepare/Pages/VisaInform...
0 – 500 transactions: Included in Fixed Fee - EUR 499/yr
501 – 100,000 transactions: EUR (€) 0.1299 per transaction
100,001 – 600,000 transactions: EUR (€) 0.1166 per transaction
600,001 – 1,100,000 transactions: EUR (€) 0.1033 per transaction
1,100,001 – 1,600,000 transactions: EUR (€) 0.0888 per transaction
1,600,001 – 2,100,000 transactions: EUR (€) 0.0816 per transaction
2,100,001 onwards: EUR (€) 0.0743 per transaction
It DOES work in Chrome.
$20 and recent passport photo, or you can bribe them with $10.
I've been multiple times, always got the visa before hand, am married to a Nepalese citizen, still needed a visa.
One UX suggestion: don't center the text in the drop downs. It makes your eyes jump around when scanning the list, and has made me look past a country I was looking for.
Other than that, great idea :)
btw, I'm Colombian, we don't need visa for Russia and Turkey (Data not available yet in your DB).
[1] http://www.doyouneedvisa.com/ [2] http://visamapper.com/
I've not come across visamapper.com, but it looks good.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_requirements_for_United_St...