This has come as a shock to travelers arriving to Uganda through the Entebbe international airport with Uganda increasing its visa costs fees from US$50 TO US$100.
All high commissions and embassies are not yet aware of this price increment as their respective websites still indicate that the visa fee is still at USD $50, yet on arrival at the Entebbe international airport, tourists are informed to cough up $ 100 USD which comes as a surprise for visitors

This move could come following Kenya’s newly set visa standards where visitors are supposed to apply and pay visa in advance of at least two weeks therefore ruling out any last minute bookings and also border crossings yet a big number of travelers in Europe and North America lately do lots of last minute booking, which means means Kenya is going to miss out on last minute travelers.

Until now there hasn’t been any adjustments made from Kenya about a change in modalities to obtain a common tourist Visa which costs US$100 to visit the three countries of Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya. This Visa as agreed by the 3 countries is to be available on arrival in any of the three countries on request but procedures has been established for clients traveling to Kenya a first point of entry.

On an interview with one of the tourism stakeholder in Nairobi, ‘The three country Visa is only availed on request an entry point. To do that one has to be at immigration in JKIA. T

This then rises a very interesting question on how traveler travel to Kenya however if they are in two months time denied boarding for lack of Visa and yet they want to travel to the rest of the two countries also which do not have the advance regulations? This is an important question that stake holders have to address. Wont this new established visa rule just instead push off potential travelers to rather fly to Entebbe or Kigali instead of Nairobi? There they get their Visa on arrival and can ask for the common tourist Visa but here in Kenya? This is a mess because those who made the new rules did not consult and failed to notice these loose ends.

This rule is mostly affect local tour operators who have already started questioning the authorities to clarify on these issues and rectify the blatant oversights which emerged already on day one of these changes coming into effect.

Likewise for the case of Uganda, the rise in the gorilla trekking fees too was one major blander on the side of the authorities. If those are changed the tourism industry needs longer term advance notice to reflect these changes in contractual arrangements. Our government should be sensitive to such issues and not take such decisions almost overnight.
Those decisions make our authorities look very much incompetent and poor decision makers. All people involved in the tourism industry especially the locale tour operators fight hard to get tourists to Uganda but the authorities without a detailed work plan just wakeup the next day with new fundamental decisions which in the long run are killing the industry.