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I want to travel to the Maldives soon. On https://immigration.gov.mv/tourist-visa/, I found the following requirements for obtaining a tourist visa:

  1. A passport or a travel document with Machine Readable Zone (MRZ) with at least 1 months validity.
  2. A pre-paid hotel booking/accommodation.
  3. Sufficient funds to last for the intended period of stay in Maldives.
  4. Confirmed onward/return tickets to home country or to country of residence (not applicable for valid resident permit holders).
  5. Entry facilities to their onward destinations; for example, the visa.
  6. Traveller Declaration must be filled in and submitted by all travelers travelling to and from Maldives, within 72 hours to the flight time. The form has to be submitted electronically via IMUGA.
  7. Yellow Fever Vaccination Certificate, if applicable. Click here to check the Yellow Fever endemic countries.

However, I do not understand what 'Entry facilities to [our] onward destinations' are. The only interpretation I can think of for this would only fit transit visas (they would be talking about the traveller being allowed to enter the next country on their itinerary) but even in the URL, it says 'tourist visa'.

I'm also not sure whether my current plan of staying at one hotel for a few days and then at a different hotel on a different island is in compliance with the rules because the form at https://imuga.immigration.gov.mv/ethd/create only lets me enter one hotel's name and one address.

Can someone please clarify on these uncertainties?

Edit: Update after I went there: No one ever scanned our QR codes. When boarding the plane in Germany, the checkin agent demanded to see our QR codes but did not scan them. Upon arrival in the Maldives, no one checked. We still created our exit QR codes before leaving and an employee (I think also the checkin agent but I'm not sure anymore as it's been some time) demanded to see our QR codes but did not scan them either.

jcaron
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1 Answers1

5

The wording is a bit unusual, but point 5 goes together with point 4.

The idea is that you need to leave the Maldives (rather than stay indefinitely, as this is a tourist visa, not a permanent residency or other long-stay visa), so you need to show you will, by having:

  • a ticket to exit the Maldives
  • all necessary documentation to successfully do so.

If you are travelling directly from country of citizenship and back, then just having a return ticket and your passport is enough to satisfy those requirements, because you don't need a visa to go back to your home country.

On the other hand, if after your stay in the Maldives you are travelling to a country which is not your country of citizenship, multiple cases are possible:

  • If you don't need a visa to enter that country, no further documentation is required.
  • If you need a visa or other permit/authorisation, then you need to show that visa (or permanent resident card or other similar documentation).

Also, if you transit via a third country which needs a visa (e.g. transit visa), then you need to show evidence of that as well.

Basically, they don't want you to be blocked in the Maldives because you are supposed to leave to go to some other country but that other country won't let you in (so either the airline won't let you board or the destination country will send you back to the Maldives).

This is a relatively common requirement, though often worded a bit differently.

As for the multiple places of stay, a common option in similar situations in other countries is to list the first place you will be staying at, and then possibly enter additional info (further places + dates) in other fields (for instance in the address field).

jcaron
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