Frequently Asked Questions
It certainly does.
For the purposes of our analysis, we use the definition of “having time for visit, a walk, have tea or coffee together–and share a laugh.” That is, if a person can come to a country without having to have a visa, spending a couple of days meeting others for tea or coffee, going for a walk, sharing a laugh–then we consider that to be visa-free travel and visa-free welcome. We consider that a transit of 24 or 48 hours, without leaving the port of entry (airport, port) is not sufficient for that.
On the other hand, we do recognize that visa-free stay of three months represents greater visa-free travel and greater visa-free welcome than one for a week.
An expanded, more nuanced definition of visa-free travel (and welcome) would account for that. In our case, and for our purposes, we opt to not capture these subtleties and stay closer to our definition from above.
We update the data once a year, each October, for the newly released visa-free travel data.
However, if we notice any discrepancies in the data during the year, we update them right away.
Visa-Free Freedom Index is calculated one of two ways. One way is through the Visa-Free Travel Index; it is calculated by multiplying each country’s Visa-Free Travel Index by its population and then dividing the sum by the total population of the world. The other way is through the Visa-Free Welcome Index; it is calculated by multiplying each country’s Visa-Free Welcome Index by its population and then dividing the sum by the total population of the world. Both methods lead to the same result.
Visa-Free Freedom Index has two meanings; they are equivalent to one another. On one hand, it indicates what percentage of the world’s population an average person in the world can visit without a visa. On the other hand, it indicates what percentage of the world’s population can visit an average person in the world without requiring a visa.
The Visa-Free Welcome Index indicates what percentage of the world’s population can visit a country without having to obtain a visa.
Visa-Free Travel Index, for a country, represents the percentage of the world’s population that citizens of that country can visit without having to obtain a visa.
We rely for our data on two primary sources. The first is the International Air Transport Association (IATA) TIM Manuals for the sources of visa requirements. IATA (at www.iata.org) tracks and reports, on an ongoing basis, visa requirements for all the countries in the world. The second source is the United States Census Bureau (at www.census.gov) that tracks and reports population figures for all countries around the world.
Visa-Free Welcome Index for a country is calculated by dividing the population of all the countries that can visit this country without a visa by the total population of the world.