
Show HN: My side project – Do I need a visa for...? - jlangenauer
http://www.doineedavisafor.com/
======
wting
I don't understand the presentation.

Allow the user to choose nationality from a drop down box, then show a world
map colored various ways:

\- green no visa

\- blue for easy to obtain visas

\- red for difficult to obtain visas

On a side note, it should probably be "United States citizen" and not "US".
Also, US -> China is a very common route that requires a visiting / mailing
your passport to a Chinese embassy to obtain a visa that you should probably
have listed.

~~~
udit99
Your suggestion sounds exactly like <Shameless_plug> Visamapper
(www.visamapper.com) </Shameless_plug>

But DoIneedAVisaFor is a more direct way to answer the question if you already
know your Destination.

~~~
jonathanberger
I just tried to visit but got a "can't find the server" error.

~~~
SammoJ
I had to drop the www <http://visamapper.com/>

------
samfoo
Delta used to have an awesome frontend for Timatic (the system that all of the
airlines use for determining their own liability in visa requirement issues)
that I used exclusively. Sadly, it seems they've removed it from their new
site.

I was able to find a similar offering[1] for free on Gulf Air's site, though.

A nice frontend to Timatic would be awesome, but I suspect that the licensing
is too pricey...

[1]
[http://www.gulfair.com/English/info/prepare/Pages/VisaInform...](http://www.gulfair.com/English/info/prepare/Pages/VisaInformation.aspx)

~~~
smikhanov
SkyTeam offers Timatic frontend on their website:
[http://www.skyteam.com/en/your-trip/Services/Visa-and-
Health...](http://www.skyteam.com/en/your-trip/Services/Visa-and-Health/)

~~~
qb
*A as well: <http://www.staralliance.com/en/services/visa-and-health/>

------
nchuhoai
Several comments layed out some alternatives, and it's usually fairly easy to
figure out where you can go, my personal favorite are the Wikipedia pages:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_requirements_for_United_St...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_requirements_for_United_States_citizens)

However, there is one edge-case that I do not see covered:

I am a permanent resident of Germany, citizen of Vietnam and hold a valid visa
for the US. Sometimes these qualifications allow for entry (for example
Mexico). I'd love to see an overview of what other countries I can visit
without a visa given my residency and other visas.

------
udit99
So about a year ago, I created Visamapper(www.visamapper.com) for the same
purpose.I ended up crowdsourcing the data. Slightly different take on the
interface as your project. But I have to say, I'm just a little jealous
because visamapper didn't get any attention on HN :-). Anyways, Nice job with
the design. Small nitpick: The list of countries at the bottom is unreadable
with the current font color.

------
JoshTriplett
You might want some country aliases; since the first items in the drop-down
had full country names in them, I expected to have to type "united states",
not "US".

Works great, otherwise. Seems handy as a standalone service; it'd help even
more if integrated into a travel site like Hipmunk.

~~~
Locke1689
It's also grammatically incorrect. I am citizen of the United States of
America, but an _American_ citizen. The correct demonym in English for a
citizen of the United States is American.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
Interesting. I'm a citizen of The Netherlands, so assuming a faulty system I
searched at 'T' and 'N', but I found it at the correct place, 'Dutch'.

~~~
jurre
If you follow the format: I'm a <Dutch> citizen. That's actually correct, and
what I used intuitively.

------
stevenp
This is really cool, and the info is super-useful.

However, your SEO links at the bottom of the page make your site look
unnecessarily spammy, especially because the color and font size makes it look
like you're trying to hide the links, like someone might have done in
GeoCities in the 90's. I understand what you're trying to achieve, but I think
you could present it in a way that doesn't look so manipulative. If you make
it easy to link to one of your pages, lots of travel blogs and sites will give
you backlinks without you needing to create links to every possible
combination on your site.

Even the URLs look unnecessarily verbose:

[http://www.doineedavisafor.com/visa/us-
citizen/travelling/af...](http://www.doineedavisafor.com/visa/us-
citizen/travelling/afghanistan)

Why is the word "travelling" in the URL? I assume it's because you feel
strongly that you will get indexed more prominently if someone uses that word
in their search. I wouldn't count on that. You'd do better to rely on the
value of your content, instead of trying to artificially game the system. If
the URL was <http://www.doineedavisafor.com/united-states/afghanistan>, you'd
still have friendly, easy-to-construct URLs, without the extra cruft.

~~~
josephjrobison
Where are the links on the bottom of the page that you speak of? Don't see
them anywhere...

~~~
stevenp
I guess he took my advice. :)

------
opinicus
Interesting project. Outside of interface choices, are there any differences
between this and some of the existing offerings like DoYouNeedVisa[1] or
VisaMapper[2] (which is crowdsourced and includes the very important
information of whether visa are available at the border)?

[1] <http://www.doyouneedvisa.com/> [2] <http://visamapper.com/>

~~~
jlangenauer
The first one of those has some rather questionable information, so I wouldn't
plan your trip based on what it says. For example, it claims Australians can
get a visa on arrival in East Timor, which isn't true.

I've not come across visamapper.com, but it looks good.

------
jmharvey
Neat! I wonder if you could crowd-source some of the missing data. I tested it
with "I'm a US Citizen travelling to Macau." but didn't get any result. The US
state department web site
[http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_955.html#en...](http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_955.html#entry_requirements)
says no visa is required.

~~~
nnash
If you're interested I can confirm that a passport is all you need to get into
Macao as a U.S. citizen.

------
glyphobet
This is great. Some thoughts:

* It abbreviates "US" in "US Citizen" but not "United States". I would expect both "United States Citizen" and "US" (country) to work too. It uses "British Citizen" vs. "United Kingdom". Both "United Kingdom Citizen" and "Britain" should work too.

* Using ISO 3166 country codes in the URLs would make them shorter.

------
redact207
GREAT idea. I travel with my girlfriend often and it's a massive pain to work
out visa requirements in countries, especially with "com" companies now
setting up pretending to be an embassy.

One issue though is how do you keep your database up to date? Some countries
(eg Thailand) change their Visa requirements VERY often.

Good work!

------
jlangenauer
For anyone that's wondering, there's data for about 60-odd countries in there
at the moment, and I'm adding more every day.

~~~
yen223
Great job on the website! I literally had the same idea a few months back -
even thought of a similar title (DoINeedAFuckingVisa.com). Never materialized
when I realized just how complex the immigration rules are.

But you know what they say about ideas and execution. Good on you for
executing :)

------
sav-henderson
This is awesome! You should also add the ability to post comments about visas
and the visa process, since in my experience, some border crossing agents try
to overcharge you and you can get them to lower their price simply by stating
that you "know" they should be charging x not y. An on the ground report of
the visa process can be invaluable next to the usually inaccurate/out-of-date
info available through the official channels.

~~~
jlangenauer
I'm thinking about this, but one of my motivations for doing it was to have
only primary-sourced, up-to-date information - there's so much rumour and
third-hand information on forums when you search for visa requirements, and I
wanted to do something more authoritative and trustworthy.

But it could work as long as the comments are clearly separated from the
"official" information.

~~~
drazvan
Or maybe just add a "report an error" option. I've tested the countries I've
visited recently and others have probably done the same, so if you see that
your official information is contradicted by all (or many) of your users, you
can raise a flag and manually check if your official information is still up
to date.

------
petercooper
"British citizen" is in between "UAE" and "US" citizens, based upon the UK, I
suppose, but it would ideally be sorted in alphabetical order.

That aside, providing more links to information on each result would be handy.
There are too many details involved to really trust the results. For example,
you can't travel to the US under the Visa Waiver Program if you've _ever_ been
arrested for _anything_ even if no conviction resulted.

------
josscrowcroft
Someone may already have said this: use IP2Country (or similar script) to
determine the visitor's most likely location, then pre-select their
nationality.

------
nategraves
This is great and is certainly something I'll use as I'm exploring summer
travel options. One thing I would love to see though, is a simple "yes" or
"no" at the front of the sentence. I had to read "US citizens do not require a
visa to visit Argentina." a couple of times to make sure I had it right.

------
seszett
I tried a few destinations and found no information for any of them (from
Canada/France to China/Taiwan for example).

Also, "French Guyana" doesn't have different requirements from the rest of
France, it does not make sense to include it in the list while not including
Martinique, Guadeloupe or any of the other French overseas regions. However,
the overseas territories have different requirements (New Caledonia is
included, but not French Polynesia).

There's also an encoding problem with Monégasque and Burkinabé in the
dropdown, and a mistake in the info page - it's Burkinabé, not Burkinabè.

Also none of the place I mention in this comment seem to have information.

Also, I see "French guyanese citizen" in the list (which doesn't exist) but no
"French caledonian citizen" (which does exist) even though both places are
lisited in the right-hand dropdown.

------
bratsche
This is pretty cool. How long did it take you to build, and what were your
sources of the data? And also, just out of curiosity, what prompted you to
create this project? Was it something that was just interesting to you
personally?

I've been working on a little side project, Magnum Opus
(<http://mag.numop.us>). It does things like orchestra job listings, allowing
people to find local music teachers, and stuff for teachers to administer
their studios (such as managing assignments and lesson schedules). Maybe once
it gets further along I'll do a proper Show HN. :)

------
thedays
Great work - nice, clean interface.

One small thing you might want to consider adding is geo-ip identification of
the user to detect which country they are visiting from, and default the
country selected in "I'm a _ citizen" to that country.

~~~
ghayes
Yes, and it was difficult to figure out what to put after "American" and
"United States" both turned up no results, but agree auto-fill would make this
an easy go-to for visa information.

------
acrooks
A few points I would like to mention about the interface:

1\. Make it easier to find a country. Code an autocomplete textbox or
something of the sort.

2\. Keep the form on the page after searching. If a user wants to make a
second search they shouldn't have to press the back button.

3\. There are a bunch of links on the bottom that are very difficult to see
with the background.

4\. The body is perhaps too transparent. The text on your "About" page blends
in with the background a little bit.

Overall, it is a good idea and can be perfected with some simple tweaks. Good
work!

~~~
saym
I've been toying with autocomplete fields recently. I came across this great
article on improving the country selection experience.

[http://uxdesign.smashingmagazine.com/2011/11/10/redesigning-...](http://uxdesign.smashingmagazine.com/2011/11/10/redesigning-
the-country-selector/)

jQuery UI Has a cool autocomplete plugin. I've used it recently, figured I'd
leave a link for the curious. <http://jqueryui.com/autocomplete/>

------
stumacd
Nice side project!

A dual citizenship feature might be a nice touch - for instance travelling to
Brazil is easier on a European passport than an Australian. So it would be
great to know what to use when.

One bug report: On the one page - Australian citizens require a visa to visit
Canada. Australian citizens do not require a visa to visit Canada.

[http://www.doineedavisafor.com/visa/australian-
citizen/trave...](http://www.doineedavisafor.com/visa/australian-
citizen/travelling/canada)

------
corywright
Very nice.

One UX suggestion: don't center the text in the drop downs. It makes your eyes
jump around when scanning the list, and has made me look past a country I was
looking for.

------
nemetroid
I think you should change the message displayed when there's no data. Being
"unable to confirm" whether a Swedish citizen needs a visa to visit Norway
comes off as worse than "have not yet added a source".

Particularly so in this example: both countries are part of the Schengen area,
i.e. it is obvious that no effort (and nothing wrong with that!) has yet been
made to add this information, rather than having been unable to find a source.

------
inovator
Thank you so much! Your site saved us big time! My girlfriend is from one of
the visa waiver countries, and she is coming to the U.S. to visit me in June.
And guess what? We have never heard of the ESTA requirement until today. I
wish online travel ticket agency could be more specific and tell us all the
required documents. Does anyone know what would happen if you forgot or didn't
know about ESTA?

~~~
jlangenauer
You get denied boarding - airlines have access to the ESTA system at check-in.
Glad to have been of help!

------
munimkazia
Amazing idea, but you probably need more data. I got married recently and we
haven't got around to our honeymoon yet. I did a few queries which were
relevant to me and they didn't have any information. (Indian citizen, tried
cyprus, egypt, indonesia with no results. A few other results were helpful).

Also, like someone mentioned, a map showing all the areas you can visit
without visas would be much more helpful.

~~~
bsimpson
Indonesia doesn't give any results for a US citizen either:

[http://www.doineedavisafor.com/visa/us-
citizen/travelling/in...](http://www.doineedavisafor.com/visa/us-
citizen/travelling/indonesia)

I was in Bali last year. You give them $25 at the airport and they give you a
temporary visa, valid for 30 days. There's an ATM at the Hong Kong airport
that pays out in US dollars, in case you need cash for the visa. Yes, the visa
fee is 25 USD.

Confirmation here:

<http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_2052.html>

------
nico
Here's a spreadsheet (on google docs) that pretty much fulfills the same need:
<http://goo.gl/RXSQk>

You just enter any airport code in the country where you are from, and any
airport code in your destination country, then you get the visa information.

To OP: seems like there's quite a bit of information missing, you could try
scraping it from the link on that spreadsheet

~~~
jlangenauer
That's actually using Delta's account for Timatic data. I doubt they'd look
kindly on my scraping it.

------
aleksandrm
Text is very hard to read on that background, barely noticeable. I suggest
changing background, or text color and making it slightly larger.

~~~
signed0
That was my first thought as well. Just extending the white translucent box
all the way to the bottom of the page would make a big difference.

------
ciroduran
Just a correction: Venezuelan citizens can travel as tourists to the United
Kingdom without the need of a visa, it is only necessary to obtain a visa if
you do not have a biometric passport. -
[http://www.doineedavisafor.com/visa/venezuelan-
citizen/trave...](http://www.doineedavisafor.com/visa/venezuelan-
citizen/travelling/united-kingdom)

------
nisse72
I like the idea, but the entries in the citizenship dropdown seem to be "not
quite" sorted. Some examples of out-of-order entries:

Ivorian (between Costa Rican and Croatian), Salvadorian (between Egyptian and
Equatorial Guinean), Burmese (between Mozambiquan and Namibian) etc.

[ edit ] Ah are they ordered by country name, not the adjective that's being
shown? Unexpected and confusing.

------
bigbang
This is awesome. Very useful. Also would be useful is a full list of countries
that don't need a visa for, based on my citizenship.

------
GFischer
Nice, works for Uruguay :) , small nitpick, it should say "I'm an" not "I'm a"
where applicable (for example for Uruguay and other countries that start with
vowels).

It would also be nice to set defaults to U.S., and to try and detect the
person's country from their IP or something.

Small things, overall it's nice to have and it works nicely (I like the
detailed explanations)

------
danellis
Here's why I don't understand the point of a site like this.

I don't know anything about the site. I don't know if it's accurate. I don't
know if it's maintained. I can't trust the information on it, so if I get an
answer from it, in order to verify it I'll have to do whatever work I would
have done if the site didn't exist. I've gained nothing.

~~~
chris_j
EDIT: As mietek points out below, the site _does_ provide precisely this
information.

I guess that every answer that the site gives could link back to an
authoritative source (such as a site run by the government of the destination
country), in order to give you an opportunity to verify that the information
is correct.

~~~
mietek
Isn't this exactly what the site does? If you're snarking on the parent
poster, then your subtlety went over my head.

Example: [http://www.doineedavisafor.com/visa/polish-
citizen/travellin...](http://www.doineedavisafor.com/visa/polish-
citizen/travelling/united-kingdom)

 _"Source:<http://ec.europa.eu/justice/citizen/move-live/index_en.htm>

Last checked: 4 March, 2013"_

------
_kai_
FYI For "Taiwanese citizen to Germany" and to other states of the Schengen
Area, no visa is required since 2011.
[http://www.taipei.diplo.de/Vertretung/taipei/en/01-Welcome-t...](http://www.taipei.diplo.de/Vertretung/taipei/en/01-Welcome-
to-Germany/Visabestimmungen/Visabestimmungen.html)

------
grecy
This is awesome.

I'll get links to this from <http://wikioverland.org> shortly.

------
andrewhyde
"US citizens do not require a visa to visit Argentina. US citizens do not
require a visa to visit Argentina, however US citizens must pay a "reciprocity
fee" prior to arrival and present the receipt for doing so when entering
Argentina. "

You have to pay the reciprocity fee for a visa as of two years ago.

------
abuiles
I know I'm required to have visa for a bunch of places but not sure which
ones, would be really cool to see given your nationality all the countries for
which you are required to have visa.

btw, I'm Colombian, we don't need visa for Russia and Turkey (Data not
available yet in your DB).

------
drazvan
A quick rule of thumb for European Union member states: no visas are needed
for any EU citizen to go any other EU country (as a tourist). It shows that I
need a visa to go from Romania to the UK or Sweden (that is false, Romania,
the UK and Sweden are all EU members).

~~~
padwan
Sure about that? Romania is not in the Schengen area..

[http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/home-affairs/what-we-
do/policies/bor...](http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/home-affairs/what-we-
do/policies/borders-and-visas/schengen/index_en.htm)

~~~
drazvan
Yes, I'm sure. Your ID (not necessarily a passport) is still checked at the
border of the Schengen space (at the entry point) but you don't need a
passport or a visa of any kind. You just show your Romanian ID to the customs
officer and then enter the country.

There's a document issued by the Romanian Ministry of Internal Affairs:
[http://www.mai.gov.ro/Documente/Utile/Calatoria%20in%20Europ...](http://www.mai.gov.ro/Documente/Utile/Calatoria%20in%20Europa.pdf)
(unfortunately they didn't bother writing it in anything other than Romanian)
- it clearly states that Romanians do not need visas for any EU country (but
they still need either a passport or an ID card).

------
malvim
That is a great side project and one that has helped me already. Kudos for
linking to the first-hand info. Now, I just found some info that you currently
don't have on the site. I'll contact you via email with the link, but maybe
you want to have a form for that?

------
gyardley
The non-standard select lists made this extremely difficult to use on iPhone.

------
vellum
You should put the US as the first choice in the drop down box, since that's
where most of your traffic will come from. Later when you have more data, you
could put the top 15 in the first choices.

~~~
krallin
Even better, using the IP / language settings, they could probably make an
educated guess! : )

------
TheBindingVoid
I wonder how you keep the visa requirements up to date. I've worked on a visa
project before and I know that visa requirements change all the time and
there's no central place to get those updates.

------
anonfunction
Awesome idea and it works great. What would be really cool is providing a
public API. I'm working on building a site that list conferences and this
would be really beneficial to incorporate.

------
frankdenbow
Yes! Simple and useful for me (I travel a lot, was looking up this kind of
info yesterday). I would change up the background since its a bit distracting.
Congrat on shipping!

------
w3pm
How about just displaying the result below as soon as the selection is
changed? Having me click a button, and then click 'Back' to try a new combo,
is annoying.

Other than that, great idea :)

------
niggler
Is there a way to list the visa requirements for a US citizen? (just a simple
list of the other countries and whether or not a visa is required to visit
those countries)

~~~
jlangenauer
Not right at the moment, but I might put that in later once I've got more of
that information. Wikipedia already has this, though:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_requirements_for_United_St...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_requirements_for_United_States_citizens)

------
swatkat
Indian citizen --> Cambodia. Need visa; you can get an E-Visa or get it on
arrival.

<http://www.mfaic.gov.kh/evisa/>

Been there, done that :)

------
tvaughan
See also this iPhone/iPad app built by a friend:
<http://www.uquery.com/apps/Ji3W1/got-visa>

------
vette982
Serves the same purpose as <http://www.visahq.com/>, but it would nice to see
a better presentation.

~~~
nico
Interesting, except it seems hard to use. For example, on the front page, I
can't select citizenship country. Also, playing with it, I selected: Chile
visa, for a Mexican national, living in China
(<http://chile.visahq.cn/requirements/Mexico/resident-China/>), and the whole
site switched to Chinese. If I was a Mexican national, why would I want the
site in Chinese, even if I was living there?

------
yesimahuman
Nice work! Noticed one issue though: did a US Citizen -> Brazil check and it
said I didn't need a visa but then says I do need one.

~~~
jlangenauer
Thanks for picking this up - I've fixed that now!

------
phryk
Wow, thanks. That's one of the question I often couldn't find an answer for
and thusly has kept me from travelling a few times. :)

------
chipmunkninja
Humm ... Doesn't work for a huge number of things I entered:

Have a lot of friends and family in Asia, and too many answers are "dunno,
sorry".

------
optymizer
I would also provide advice on where to apply for a visa. The "nearest X
embassy" is not too helpful. Otherwise, great work!

------
meerita
Works neat. One question, why the background image? such a waste of resources
and it doesn't add anything at all.

------
gottagetmac
United States -> China (a pretty important route that does require a visa)
says no information.

------
pinouchon
North Korean citizens can live and work in North Korea without limit by virtue
of their citizenship.

I'm not so sure

------
starik36
Very cool. I'd add the ability to locate the nearest embassy/consulate based
on GeoLocation.

------
NonEUCitizen
It does not work in IE9 -- screen flashes but info not displayed. I use large
fonts.

It DOES work in Chrome.

------
baby
That's a great idea but it's not working for me. I'm french and visiting
HongKong soon.

------
aaronwhite
Really well done and love the SEO-ness that provides real value for folks!
Nice tool

------
sobbybutter
Thanks for making this! I'm making travel plans right now and it's quite
handy.

------
lewisflude
I'm a bit annoyed that British Citizen is filed under U (for United Kingdom).

~~~
lmm
It isn't (though that was what I was expecting); "British" works.

(Though it can't tell me whether I need a visa for Ukraine, so I'm not
enormously impressed)

~~~
salvadors
If you actually need to know, rather than that just being an example: you
don't. You used to have to fill in a form on arrival, but even that was
abolished a year or so ago.

------
beilabs
Irish Citizen => Nepal; Visa required...not in your database yet.

~~~
jlangenauer
Actually, I'm putting data in for Nepal right as we speak. And Irish citizens
don't need a visa before arriving in Nepal, they can get one at the border.

~~~
seivan
Make sure to write the requirements for visa on arrival.
[http://www.doineedavisafor.com/visa/swedish-
citizen/travelli...](http://www.doineedavisafor.com/visa/swedish-
citizen/travelling/cambodia)

$20 and recent passport photo, or you can bribe them with $10.

------
archer174
The US to India has a spelling error. Visa is spelled vist.

------
wyclin
This is awesome. Where did you get all the data from btw?

------
prawn
Tried Australian going to Morocco and China. "Sorry, we've no information
available." Could've got more data in there before playing your "Show HN" card
maybe.

~~~
yen223
To be fair, there are approximately 200 countries in this world. So you'll
need data for about 200^2 = 40,000 different connections, and that's before
considering subtleties like length of stay, PR statuses, etc.

~~~
prawn
Sure. I did say "more" rather than "all"; others have noted the absence of
_American in China_. It'd make sense to prioritise some key ones before
launching.

Information for Australians is at Smart Traveller FWIW, under Entry/Exit info.
e.g.,

<http://www.smartraveller.gov.au/zw-cgi/view/Advice/China>

------
robertomb
How to help improving information?

------
bedspax
Congrats, cool.

------
btw0
very clever URL for the resulting page

------
radiusq
Might want to put in some 'alias' type of names for some common countries,
like England for United Kingdom for example.

