Three new Denmark visa application centres open in China

On 1 June 2017 The Royal Danish Embassy to China opened three new Visa Application Centers to public in the cities of Fuzhou, Shenzhen and Xi’an.

The three new centres are part of Denmark’s continuous efforts to facilitate travel by a growing number of Chinese outbound tourists in the China-Denmark Tourism Year 2017, and add to the nine existing ones in Beijing, Chengdu, Chongqing, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Jinan, Nanjing, Shanghai and Shenyang.

“I am very pleased to see the new Visa centres open their doors in Fuzhou, Shenzhen and Xi’an, representing a total population of 186 million in these provinces, and marking our step forward to promoting what Denmark has to offer as a destination for both sightseers and business travellers,” said A. Carsten Damsgaard, Ambassador of Denmark to China.

“What’s geographically significant is that the centre in Xi’an will provide applicants from five landlocked provinces and regions in Northwest China with easier access to Denmark and Europe.”

The openings came after five centres were opened across China in the spring of 2016.
The Kingdom of Denmark (Denmark, Greenland and Faroe Islands) offers unique landscapes of natural beauty and cultural heritage of Hans Christian Andersen, fjords, icebergs and midnight sun in Greenland and unspoiled nature at the Faroe Islands.

Denmark was one of the first EU countries to opened visa centres in China in 2010, and since then the bilateral people-to-people contacts in the field of tourism have thrived. The Danish government forecasts to receive 262,000 Chinese outbound travellers this year, up from 218,000 in 2016. The figure stood at 50,000 in 2009.

The travellers’ passion will further be ignited following that a social media post by the Royal Danish Embassy in Beijing about an invasive plague of Pacific oysters along the Limfjord’s shores in Northern Jutland has attracted tens of millions of interactions on a possible “eating tour” to Denmark.

Applications for both short-term visa and long-term residence permit can be handed over to these 12 centres. Normally, the visa procedure takes approximately five to 11 working days, and a little longer during the high season.

The collection of biometric data also needs to be done at these centres in accordance with the implementation of the Visa Information System (VIS). The fingerprint scans can be re-used for further visa applications over a 5-year period.

Denmark is the only country being able to issue travel permissions to Greenland and Faroe Islands along with the Schengen visa sticker.

Worth mentioning, Iceland is represented by Denmark in Shanghai and Guangzhou. It will therefore be possible to hand in applications for short-term visa to Iceland at the Centers in Fuzhou, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Shanghai and Shenzhen.

Link to addresses and contact information of the three new centres