What is a mean of Travel Itinerary and what is Purpose of a Travel Itinerary for visa Processing?

 

An itinerary is simply a document that details your travel plans. It usually provides details of hotel bookings, flight arrangements, and daily activities or schedules for the duration of your stay. An itinerary is only required for journeys undertaken for tourism or private purposes. It must usually specify the places you intend to visit by way of schedule of activities.

Article 14(1)(a) of the Visa Code states an applicant for a Schengen visa shall present documents indicating the purpose of the journey. Further, Annex II(A) (3) (b) of the Code states that for journeys undertaken for tourism or personal reasons, the applicant must submit documentation relating to their itinerary.

The Visa Code describes itinerary to include “confirmation of the booking of an organised trip or any other appropriate document indicating the envisaged travel plans.”

Bookings on organised trip or tour guides and tickets for entry into tourist sites could be submitted as evidence of itinerary.

A key requirement of an itinerary is that it must be plausible. The schedule of activities must be arranged in a manner as to make your plans credible. For example, it may be more reasonable to visit tourist sites that are in close proximity to one another on a particular day, rather than a disjointed schedule of visits that are miles apart from each another and lacks coherence. If your itinerary is implausible or disjointed, this may raise doubts about the credibility of the purpose of your visit and may cause your visa to be refused.

Another requirement is that the duration of the itinerary must be consistent with your travel dates. Specifically, it must be consistent with the travel dates as shown on the visa application form, flight booking, hotel reservation, and travel medical insurance. If your itinerary shows discrepancies with travel dates shown on other documentation, your visa may be refused.

Purpose of a Travel Itinerary for visa Processing

Whenever you are applying for a visa, to any country, specifically for Schengen countries, the embassies request you to submit flight reservation for visa processing. When we come across this demand, we are often worried on what would happen if the visa is rejected and you may have to bear the cost on the air ticket. The travel itinerary is to show the embassy that you have a concrete travel plans, and don’t intent to remain in the country illegally unlike what most travellers think but you don’t have to worry about this anymore. Now you don’t have to buy expensive flight ticket for visa application before it gets approved. In fact, worldwide embassies advice travel itineraries instead buying actual tickets. It is a formality that is required to be presented for the sake of application.