Belarus welcomes first visa-free tourists from China

Saturday, August 11, 2018

Belarus welcomes its first visa-free tourists from China after two nations signed an agreement in order to boost tourism.

Xing Yu, a sales manager in a Beijing company, was the first Chinese tourist to step down from the aircraft ramp onto the Belarusian soil. He was gifted a certificate for a Minsk hotel suite as part of a VIP program. The certificate can be used today or the next time when he arrives in Belarus with his family. The certificate is valid for one year and will expire in August 2019.

Xing Yu said it is the second time he has come to Belarus. He was glad to hear that no visas are required now.

According to Vitaly Gritsevich, Deputy Director of the Tourism Department of the Belarusian Sports and Tourism Ministry, Belarus has been working with the Chinese market consistently for a long time.

Vitaly Gritsevich said that 2018 has been declared the Year of Belarusian Tourism in China. The agreement to allow citizens of the two countries to visit each country for 30 days without visas is its logical continuation. Besides, we are working hard to improve our infrastructure so that Chinese tourists could be comfortable here.

Vitaly Gritsevich also added that visa waiver agreements are very effective. He mentioned Argentina as an example.

They signed a similar agreement with Argentina last year and we already see that its economic effect is rather high. In H1 2018 alone Belarus welcomed six times more Argentinians than in the entire year of 2017.

The Belarusian-Chinese visa waiver agreement came into force today. Belarusians can stay in China without visas for 30 days per trip or at most 90 days per year. The same rule applies to Chinese citizens in Belarus. If a person wants to stay for more than 30 days or wants to engage in education or business, he or she will need to acquire a special visa.

The visa waiver agreement applies to private trips, business trips, and tourism trips. The intergovernmental agreement to allow holders of regular passports to travel without visas was signed in Qingdao on 10 June during the Belarus president’s working trip to China. Belarus is one of the few European countries, which have signed a visa waiver agreement with China.

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