Agents are being stretched to breaking point trying to help clients who are desperate to travel but are being held back by disproportionately long waits for visas. But it seems that many foreign embassies and their visa divisions are out of sync with the demand for travel, and in no hurry to re-staff their offices, which had been put into various degrees of dormancy during the pandemic.
A Cape Town travel agent who wished to remain anonymous has been phoning other agents in Cape Town and other cities in the hope of getting someone’s unwanted US visa appointment to assist one of her clients. She told Travel News that her client was desperate. “Her son is in the US and it has been three years since she saw him. She will take the first appointment she can get for her US visa. I have been trying for weeks to get an appointment for her for an interview; the first available I managed to book was for December 2022!”
Costly mistake
Ilse Weddell, an eTravel ITC and owner of Travel Gab in Gauteng, has also been desperately seeking an appointment slot for a US tourist visa before July. Her story highlights that, while agents are working under enormous pressure and doing their best for their clients, they are working with unforgiving systems, where an innocent mistake cannot be remedied and the consequences can snowball into a horrifying mess.
Weddell plans to fly a customer to Namibia at her own personal expense unless a slot in South Africa can be found.
She had booked an appointment in August and accidentally cancelled the reservation. “I had previously logged in and when I refreshed the screen, it took me straight back to the calendar. I rebooked the appointment but, without realising it, I booked for the wrong person.” Weddell says thereafter, there was nothing she could do about it.
The irate traveller was dissatisfied that Weddell, an experienced consultant, could have made the mistake. To satisfy the customer and safeguard her business from any backlash, Weddell decided her best course of action would be to confirm an earlier appointment at another visa centre, even outside South Africa.
Weddell stands to lose at least R7 000 unless she can find an opening at a local visa centre in time. “I check the system about 15 times a day.”
“Unbelievable demand”
Lisa Felix, owner of The Visa Expert in Port Elizabeth, says she too trawls the US application site every day trying to grab cancelled appointments. “The agents I assist are getting irritated saying their clients just don’t understand how an appointment can take so long. The US is not the only problem, the UK is taking a minimum of seven weeks to process after application – the UK Embassy told me that they are also processing humanitarian visas for the Ukraine and the backlog we were hoping would clear continues to frustrate clients and agents.”
The Cape Town agent said: “Most of my applications at the moment are for the US and the UK and the waiting period to apply for and process visas is starting to affect my credibility with some clients. They just can’t believe the first appointment I can book for a US visa is now in February 2023.” She says that most, but not all European embassies have managed to stay on top of their processes and take between three and four weeks to issue visas from application to issue.
Felix is also seeing problems developing with Australian visas, another popular destination for South Africans who were barred for two years. “It is taking between three and five months now to apply for and process Australian visa applications. The result is that I am inundated with mid-process applications and new applications. I have never had so many visa applications. The pent-up demand is unbelievable, particularly for clients wanting to reunite with family members. Corporate clients are gearing up to travel more now that it has become easier to enter other countries.
Felix is now suffering from burnout and exhaustion. She says: “My doctor says I must take it easy, but how can I? My agents and clients need the process to get them travelling again and the applications just keep coming in.”
