I applied for the E-Visa yesterday. It's $25 USD pp as well for single entry (and $60 USD for multiple). I like the idea of it being one less thing to worry about on the connection in Cairo. It will be interesting to see it work out.
The E-Visa application process was mostly straightforward. They are definitely using a somewhat primitive webapp (I work in IT) lot's of restrictions in certain fields - kind of curious what kind of database they use on the back end that has such limitations on fields. The site looks pretty, but the database they use won't take special characters like - / and in some cases , . ?, in many cases a trailing white space which you could not see would cause it to error (you type something in, and hit space bar afterward, before moving to the next 'box') ---so it took me a few minutes to get through some steps as I had to eliminate certain punctuation.
During the process - you provide the same information, you can submit multiple apps together and only provide these details 1 time for the entire group (for me it was self/spouse/adult child)
Host company
Host address in Egypt
Host phone number in Egypt
Host email address
Who is paying your expenses while in Egypt
I'm actually glad I did it this way - I had the Blue-O-Two UK address and phone, but not the Hurghada address. If it's anything like other countries I have visited I may have just been able to put a hotel name and "hurghada" and they would have taken it...but given that I'm doing it online, from home - I had time to email blue-o-two and get their details handy.
They make you submit an image of your passport...now, they aren't very good with instructions - but it seems logical they are looking for the signature and ID page. We'll see if they kick it back to me unapproved.
I do not have a scanner anymore, so I took a very clean photo of the pages - curious if that will suffice - my experience is that fewer folks have scanners. They only scanner I have is sheet fed - I use it for receipts I submit to my employer...not going to fit the passport through that.
When you actually pay - they redirect you off the Egypt.gov site onto a credit card clearance site which I am familiar with. The payment site uses certain multifactor authentication methods that are used in a few other sites...basically if your credit card company supports the feature - you have to go to your phone/app and approve the purchase. I was more impressed by which payment clearing house they were using - more than any other part of the process.
So now it's in process - assuming it gets approved - and doesn't cause me problems on the ground in Cairo - this was simple enough. Being a brand new site, I would expect that in a year they have addressed certain shortcomings on the site - provided better instructions. Their is a help feature which emails them questions --- I used it, response recieved in about 4 hours on a weekday. The only complaint I had about the help feature was the lack of special characters...I had to remove all punctuation which made it really difficult to properly express my question...however, they managed a response the basically answered my question.
As this type of technology comes online - I would expect them to reduce the staff onsite at airports to process visas manually in real time. That's usually how any organization justifies the expense of setting these things up...in the promise that it will allow them to either scaling down manpower, or at least handle increased volume without scaling up manpower.
The E-Visa application process was mostly straightforward. They are definitely using a somewhat primitive webapp (I work in IT) lot's of restrictions in certain fields - kind of curious what kind of database they use on the back end that has such limitations on fields. The site looks pretty, but the database they use won't take special characters like - / and in some cases , . ?, in many cases a trailing white space which you could not see would cause it to error (you type something in, and hit space bar afterward, before moving to the next 'box') ---so it took me a few minutes to get through some steps as I had to eliminate certain punctuation.
During the process - you provide the same information, you can submit multiple apps together and only provide these details 1 time for the entire group (for me it was self/spouse/adult child)
Host company
Host address in Egypt
Host phone number in Egypt
Host email address
Who is paying your expenses while in Egypt
I'm actually glad I did it this way - I had the Blue-O-Two UK address and phone, but not the Hurghada address. If it's anything like other countries I have visited I may have just been able to put a hotel name and "hurghada" and they would have taken it...but given that I'm doing it online, from home - I had time to email blue-o-two and get their details handy.
They make you submit an image of your passport...now, they aren't very good with instructions - but it seems logical they are looking for the signature and ID page. We'll see if they kick it back to me unapproved.
I do not have a scanner anymore, so I took a very clean photo of the pages - curious if that will suffice - my experience is that fewer folks have scanners. They only scanner I have is sheet fed - I use it for receipts I submit to my employer...not going to fit the passport through that.
When you actually pay - they redirect you off the Egypt.gov site onto a credit card clearance site which I am familiar with. The payment site uses certain multifactor authentication methods that are used in a few other sites...basically if your credit card company supports the feature - you have to go to your phone/app and approve the purchase. I was more impressed by which payment clearing house they were using - more than any other part of the process.
So now it's in process - assuming it gets approved - and doesn't cause me problems on the ground in Cairo - this was simple enough. Being a brand new site, I would expect that in a year they have addressed certain shortcomings on the site - provided better instructions. Their is a help feature which emails them questions --- I used it, response recieved in about 4 hours on a weekday. The only complaint I had about the help feature was the lack of special characters...I had to remove all punctuation which made it really difficult to properly express my question...however, they managed a response the basically answered my question.
As this type of technology comes online - I would expect them to reduce the staff onsite at airports to process visas manually in real time. That's usually how any organization justifies the expense of setting these things up...in the promise that it will allow them to either scaling down manpower, or at least handle increased volume without scaling up manpower.
Is the e-visa just a basic print out?
