India has significantly strengthened its travel and cultural ties with the UAE by expanding the Visa on Arrival (VoA) facility for UAE nationals to nine major international airports. In a move signaling India’s commitment to hassle-free travel and regional growth, three new strategic hubs—Kochi, Calicut, and Ahmedabad—have been added to the existing network of Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, and Kolkata.
This sweeping expansion ensures dramatically smoother and quicker entry procedures for visitors arriving from the UAE, creating a robust, nine-point network that allows travelers to choose more practical and time-efficient routes. For tourism, this wider access makes India profoundly more accessible, enabling UAE nationals interested in heritage sites, spiritual retreats, and cultural festivals to plan their journeys with unprecedented ease. By distributing traffic away from metro airports, the move encourages more balanced regional growth and strengthens India’s positioning as a premium, hassle-free destination.
The benefits extend deeply into the economic corridor. Quicker entry supports business travelers who can now easily route to meetings and conferences in emerging commercial centers like Ahmedabad and Kochi. This strategic addition aligns with India’s push to deepen economic relationships with UAE businesses and investors across key manufacturing and IT clusters. Furthermore, the expansion provides a critical boost to the medical tourism sector; India is already a preferred healthcare destination, and expanded airport access significantly reduces travel stress for patients and families seeking advanced and affordable treatments across various regions.
Overall, by simplifying entry across more regions and ensuring shorter queues and reduced processing time, the development reinforces the rising people-to-people connections between India and the UAE. The expanded VoA network is viewed by both nations as a reflection of a shared vision to make travel smoother, faster, and more accessible for UAE visitors choosing India for business, leisure, or critical healthcare.
