Premium visa processing should be offered to people arriving in Australia who are willing to pay extra to be fast tracked, it is claimed.
It means they would be able to pay to skip long queues at immigration and customs under a plan backed by the Tourism and Transport Forum, Australia’s peak tourism industry body.The thinking behind the move is to encourage big spending visitors from Asia and elsewhere by offering paid for premium visitor visa processing.
It comes at a time when a number of prominent business people are calling for it to be easier for Chinese people to get visas.Is our morality at sea with the refugees?‘Premium processing is a great opportunity to deliver a quicker process for visitors willing to pay more. This could include shorter turnaround for the approval process and a VIP experience on arrival in Australia,’ said TTF chief executive Ken Morrison.
‘This doesn’t reduce the level of scrutiny, just speeds up the process for application and once they get here,’ he added.
The plan echoes other planned or existing programmes that provide preferential treatment to people passing through immigration and a number of airlines, including Qantas, also offer speedier immigration processing for first and business class passengers at selected airports.
No figure has been put on the extra cost for fast track processing but a similar service in Dubai charges visitors up to $95.The TTF has also proposed online visitor visa processing for tourists from vital visitor markets such as China, and producing visa application forms in Chinese and other key Asian languages.
The organisation would also like to see the introduction of three-year, multiple entry visas for Chinese leisure visitors. ‘Earlier this year, the Abbott government introduced three-year, multiple entry visas for Chinese business visitors and we’d encourage them to do the same for leisure visitors,’ Morrison explained.
It means they would be able to pay to skip long queues at immigration and customs under a plan backed by the Tourism and Transport Forum, Australia’s peak tourism industry body.The thinking behind the move is to encourage big spending visitors from Asia and elsewhere by offering paid for premium visitor visa processing.
It comes at a time when a number of prominent business people are calling for it to be easier for Chinese people to get visas.Is our morality at sea with the refugees?‘Premium processing is a great opportunity to deliver a quicker process for visitors willing to pay more. This could include shorter turnaround for the approval process and a VIP experience on arrival in Australia,’ said TTF chief executive Ken Morrison.
‘This doesn’t reduce the level of scrutiny, just speeds up the process for application and once they get here,’ he added.
The plan echoes other planned or existing programmes that provide preferential treatment to people passing through immigration and a number of airlines, including Qantas, also offer speedier immigration processing for first and business class passengers at selected airports.
No figure has been put on the extra cost for fast track processing but a similar service in Dubai charges visitors up to $95.The TTF has also proposed online visitor visa processing for tourists from vital visitor markets such as China, and producing visa application forms in Chinese and other key Asian languages.
The organisation would also like to see the introduction of three-year, multiple entry visas for Chinese leisure visitors. ‘Earlier this year, the Abbott government introduced three-year, multiple entry visas for Chinese business visitors and we’d encourage them to do the same for leisure visitors,’ Morrison explained.