How To Get Visa in Peak Season

Are you planning to travel abroad during this Summer? If, Yes, then you better hustle! 

You are not the only one, why you keep on skipping. It is peak season.

As a Visa consultancy, we know how many people want to go abroad for their vacation on every peak season. We have seen travelers postponing or canceling their trips just because they didn't had enough processing time for their visa application. 

Lets see some basic guidelines for first timers:

Traveling abroad sounds fun and yes it is fun like nothing else, but at first you should be aware of the visa processes and documentation, Getting a visa is a very crucial and critical part of our entire trip and everything that we have paid for further bookings is at stake until we get the visa.

Visa is a gateway pass for most of the countries, so you can roam freely and do whatever you want.

We have drafted out some factors that can affect your application during this peak season, including  some expert suggestions that will help you to plan your trip.

It is not in our powers to do anything about the visa conclusion that the Embassy/Consulate will go up against our application.

So, what we can do?

Need not to worry, we can surely take other precautions to reduce the risk of not getting a visa on time.

Here are some situations that we as a traveler generally not know happens at the consulates/ VFS / agents, etc. 

Chunk of Applications At Consulate – This is obvious as summer is the time when maximum Indians travel abroad for vacation. The reason being holidays and weather in different countries during that period is favorable for Indians.

We have noticed most of Indians majorly travel to the South East Asian countries, UK, Schengen and the US.

For instance, Consulate normally need a time of 5 working days to process a visa, But during the peak season they need 15 to 45 working days due to pile of incoming applications. Moreover, due to less manpower at embassies the processing of all applications in the peak season become difficult and time consuming. Also, unfortunately there are maximum 4 embassies all over India for almost all countries.

So what to do to avoid such rush and get your visa processed in time?

Below we have mentioned most preferred destinations and time required for processing the visa application in peak season. 

If we consider Singapore destination as an example, on an average there are only 50 agents in Mumbai who has authorised logins, and a numerable number of travel agents accepting applications from travelers. This creates a huge load on the Consulate due to which, they might put a restriction on the number of applications to be logged in on daily basis.

So, if the Consulate is not accepting the applications then how can they issue a visa? Such situations are common. As a traveler, we expect our agents/consultants to help us in such situations but in those situations we do not get what we expect and that leads to sheer disappointment, Unfortunately, such situations are out of any agents/consultants control.

So, starting the visa application process in advance saves you from all the last-minute hassle which automatically intensify your chances to get your visa done in time.

Heavy Rush at Agents/Consultants – You might think how can this in any way delay our visa process? 95% travelers get their visa processed through visa agents/consultants, resulting in a heavy rush same as embassy/consulate.

Agents/Consultants might not be able to help you out on an urgent basis for your visa processing due to commitments to the prior applications that they have already accepted for processing.

This can result in forcing an applicant to do the entire hefty process on their own including travelling to the Embassy / Consulate, preparation and submission of documents, getting the DD done, etc. 

So, Be smart and start the process well ahead of time for upcoming peak season to avoid yourself of all this.

Non-availability of Appointment Date – Especially countries like Schengen, UK, USA require the applicant to visit personally for biometrics or interview to get the visa. The visa processing time starts after the appointment with the VFS / Consulate. 

When one, starts the process well in advance we give the Consulate enough time to process our visa, even after the appointment date. Otherwise due to the large number of travelers the appointment get booked faster and the date goes even further sometimes the appointment date comes after your travel date. The unavailability of appointment dates might result in a delay of visas, hampering our other travel arrangements and causing heavy losses.

Non-coordination from Embassy / Consulate – The Embassy / Consulate if requested generally consider the applications with earlier travel date and process it faster. But due to heavy rush, we face this major problem of non–coordination from the Embassy / Consulate. It is not easy to get in touch with them and request to process the application faster. Even after submission, the application is not taken for verification immediately by the competent authority, which creates a major risk of delaying in visa application process.

Mistake in Visa – There can be mistakes in the visa after issuance like wrong passport number, multiple spelling mistakes in the names, sometimes single entry visa issued instead of multiple entries whereas you want to enter the destination country more than 2 times. Such issues appear during the peak season.

So one needs to be careful to have a minimum of 10 – 15 working days after the visa processing before our travel date. In such situations, we need to re-submit the passport and get the correction made.

So next time you plan a trip make sure you start your application exactly as per above timelines just to save yourself from all the hassle and enjoy the worlds best thing in the world  “world” itself.