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Where can one find reliable (i.e. linked to the source - presumably a country's government website) travel visa requirements information for arbitrary combinations of citizenship and visited countries?

I've found Project Visa but the information is incomplete (e.g. the Caribbean lacks Belize), or the sources are unclear (e.g. the page for Colombia doesn't list nationals that don't require a visa).

In particular, I'm a Romanian passport holder living in the USA and looking for visa requirements to visit Colombia, Panama and Belize.

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4 Answers 4

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The authoritative source is Timatic, which IATA shares with the public as the IATA Travel Centre.

The interface is slow and clunky, but the results are absolutely accurate. The same tool is used by all airlines to check documents for international travel, so if Timatic says no, you're not flying.

The one catch is that Timatic is meant for flights, and countries do occasionally have different requirements for land or sea crossings. Usually this just means that eg. given border points are not open to foreigners or don't issue visas on arrival, not that the actual entry requirements to the country are different.

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    Technically Timatic isn't "authoritative" - only the government of the country in question would be truly authoritative. That said, Timatic is the best general reference available - by far!
    – Doc
    Commented May 30, 2014 at 3:16
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    It's authoritative enough in the sense that airlines won't let you board if it says no, even if you'd actually be allowed in the country if they did let you fly...
    – lambshaanxy
    Commented May 30, 2014 at 3:57
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As jpatokal mentioned, Timatic is one of the most complete databases and is what is used by the airlines.

Unfortunately, the pages that the airlines see, with a complete list of requirements given each country and nationality, along with all the exceptions and special rules, is not easy to find. The "IATA Travel Centre" is really terrible to use, as it just gives you a Yes or No answer, without saying why; nor does it give you the ability to enter many country-specific travel documents and such.

However, the pages with complete information are still accessible, if you know where to look. KLM has a public interface into Timatic.

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  • Thanks for the KLM link. Unfortunately, their interface with Timatic is broken. I'm a Romanian national residing in the US and I got an error the "Nationality cannot be the same as alien residence" or something along those lines. On the second try, I got "Timatic did not respond".
    – Dan Dascalescu
    Commented May 31, 2014 at 23:58
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    @DanDascalescu: It works for me. Put Romania as Nationality, U.S.A. for Alien residence and embarkation, and one of those countries as Destination country. (Actually the "Alien resident" is optional so you don't even have to put it. The error message seems to indicate you put Romania as "Alien resident of", which wouldn't make sense.)
    – user102008
    Commented Jun 1, 2014 at 1:52
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Visa requirements change occasionally for countries, and more frequently for others. There are edge cases, events and more.

As a result, each of these companies or sites that track them may not have all the information. I like VisaHQ but it's not necessarily perfect either. They try their best, after all, it's in their best interest to be up to date and accurate, but stuff will be missing if they couldn't find it, or potentially out of date.

When it comes down to it, the most reliable means of finding out the travel visa requirements is from the country itself, or their embassy/consulate in your country. In your case, for example, you can contact the Embassy of Colombia in Romania.

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  • Much easier to use than IATA Travel Centre. Thanks!
    – Dan Dascalescu
    Commented May 30, 2014 at 9:36
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VisaCentral.com is another site, recommended by Celebrity Cruises, so I assume they handle sea crossing. Though in a random test for Curacao visas, I didn't see anything specific about air vs. sea.

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