BAKU, MAY 04 (DNA) – In recent years, as a preferred travel destination of millions of tourists Azerbaijan has enforced a number of innovative reforms in order to ensure convenience for the foreigners who choose it.

One of these innovations is that tourists can get an electronic visa. Since starting application of the “ASAN Viza” system in Azerbaijan, each foreigner is able to obtain visa just in 3 steps (application, payment and download) without going anywhere.

Tourists only need to visit www.evisa.gov.az, the official e-visa portal of the Republic of Azerbaijan. Portal serves foreigners in 9 languages. Issuance of visa within 3 hours is also possible with the application for an “emergency visa” here.

Applications for getting group visas can also be obtained through the Portal. At present, the number of eligible countries for the electronic visa application to Azerbaijan has reached 95. A list of those countries can be found here .

Additionally, since May 15, 2018, visa issuance upon arrival for foreigners and stateless persons is provided with the help of “ASAN Visa” staff and self-service terminals at Baku, Ganja, Gabala and Lankaran International Airports.

The “ASAN Visa” staff at the airports serve foreigners in the languages of Azerbaijani, English, French, Spanish, German, Turkish, Hindi, Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew, Urdu, Norwegian and Russian.

Through the “ASAN Viza” system at the airports, issuance of upon arrival visas are provided to the citizens of 15 countries – Bahrain, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait, Iran, Israel, Malaysia, Singapore, Japan, China, Turkey, South Korea and Indonesia, as well as foreigners holding valid residency permits of GCC countries.

On average, the visa issuing process via the terminals for each foreigner is granted for only 2 minutes. In addition to self-service terminals, visa issuance through the special desk windows and banking services are also rendered.

In general, within a short period of time since the start of operations ASAN Visa system about 1, 191 000 foreigners have received a visa upon their application for traveling to Azerbaijan.

This year, the number of tourists applying for electronic visa to Azerbaijan has increased by 72% compared to the same period of last year.

It should be noted that the “ASAN Viza” system was created according to the Decree No. 923 on “Simplifying the issuance of electronic visas and establishing “ASAN Viza” system”, by the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan, dated June 1, 2016.=DNA

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