A unified tourist visa for the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, similar to Europe's Schengen visa system, should be prioritized by regional governments to lure international travelers despite increased security concerns, said David Scowsill, president and chief executive officer of the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC). A unified visa would enable tourists and expatriates living in the GCC to be able to move freely between any of the six member states – the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and Bahrain - mirroring the Schengen Agreement in Europe and visa developments in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). GCC nationals, who account for 51.9 percent of the region's 50.3 million population, can already move between borders without the need for a visa. The remaining 48.1 percent, which equates to 24.2 million people, are resident expatriates, who need an entry visa for each country. Scowsill said a unified GCC visa should be "very high up the political agenda." "If you create a common visa zone for people who live in the GCC countries it has a huge, huge positive impact on job creation and economic development," Scowsill told Zawya on the sidelines of the Arabian Hotel Investment Conference in Dubai last week. Scowsill recommended following the example of the Schengen Agreement, which enables the free and unrestricted movement of people, goods, services and capital within 26 European member nations which are home to around 400 million people. "The Schengen countries [agreement] was the first big example of this and the growth that created was enormous," he said. "The growth of the low cost airlines like EasyJet and Ryanair connecting all these provincial cities in Europe would never have happened if they hadn't moved towards open skies and a common visa for people coming into the Schengen territory." In the GCC, the issue has been publicly raised by various tourism boards in the media since 2007, including by the Dubai Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing. The proposal was also on the official agenda at a meeting of GCC tourism ministers in Oman in October last year. One step has been taken in the region; the introduction of a multiple-entry visa system for cruise tourists in the UAE, launched in August last year, and expected to boost ship calls by 16 percent and passenger numbers by 7 percent in the current season. Currently, travel and tourism contributes 8.7 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in the UAE and supports over half a million jobs, or 9 percent of total employment. It contributes over 27 billion UAE dirhams ($7.35 billion) in investment and 95 billion dirhams of foreign visitor earnings. — SG/Agencies
