Pre-registration portal and its facilities for travelers to Qatar

Ministry of Interior (MoI) Report

Since the beginning of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, many exceptional measures have been taken globally with regard to travel procedures between countries. The State of Qatar has provided a flexible and practical solution to this procedure by allowing travel to Qatar and ensuring adherence to health procedures through the pre-registration platform for those coming to the country Qatar.

Major Abdullah Al Jasmi, Head of the Administrative Affairs Section at the Airport Passports Department and a member of the Quarantine Unit, explained key factors about the pre-registration portal, its most prominent advantages, how to register, the required data and other points. 

He said: The Airport Passports Department always seeks to facilitate the procedures for entering and exiting travelers through Hamad International Airport, especially at the existing Corona pandemic times. The department is always striving to find the easiest and fastest ways to overcome all difficulties and use the latest electronic methods in cooperation with partners such as the Ministry of Public Health and the Hamad Airport Administration and Airport Security Department, airlines and other partners.

He added: The portal allows pre-registration for travelers before arriving at the Qatari ports, with the aim of facilitating entry procedures at Abu Samra Port and Hamad International Airport.

Registration is done electronically on the website by creating a new user by entering the required data and then clicking on register. Applicants can sign in to the platform by entering the e-mail, password, and verification code, then pressing Enter and choosing “submit a new application” and filling in the required data.

The health data of citizens and residents is available at the Ministry of Public Health. Once the personal number is registered, the person’s status appears in terms of vaccinations or cases of Covid-19 and recovery.

Submission through the platform for citizens and residents is optional. After submitting the application, the traveler will be able to follow up and know the status of his application for approval of any other procedures required to obtain approval. Applicants can register on the platform through the Ehteraz application or the platform’s website.

Major Abdullah Al Jasmi added that the platform provides information to the traveler in an easy and convenient way, and the applicants including citizens and residents vaccinated within the State of Qatar will immediately reach a message stating the approval without attaching any documents.

Citizens and residents benefit from registering on the platform to know the latest developments in the travel policy system, whether there is a quarantine or not, and can use the specified path at Hamad International Airport and do not need a series of traditional procedures and submitting pledges and other papers, which save their time and effort, as well as they can benefit from the E-gate service.

The head of the family can register all his family members in one application. Certain paths have been defined for each class of travelers, which are determined according to the traveler’s category of citizen, resident and visitor, and those who meet the conditions of the vaccine or not, in addition to the country of arrival. All of these classifications regulate the correct path for each type of traveler.

Visitors

For visitors, registration is mandatory. The visitor must enter the visa number, passport number, type of vaccine, the date of the last dose or the date of the last infection with the Coronavirus (Covid-19) if the traveler was infected with the virus and recovered. He/she has to upload the attachments, including a copy of the passport, a copy of a certificate of vaccination, copy of the hotel quarantine for those who are not vaccinated or coming from countries with a high risk.

Regarding the failure to get approval and the reasons for that, he said, in most cases of the applications of the visiting travelers to Qatar they are rejected due to not uploading the required documents, such as a copy of the passport or vaccination certificate, or the lack of clarity in the image. There is a full team from the Ministry of Health working around the clock, communicating with the people who apply for registration to inform them of the reasons for non-approval, including the lack of clarity in the images of the documents and absence of the QR code.

He added: Regarding the hotel quarantine, some travelers book a tourist hotel that was not on the list of approved quarantine hotels. In order to avoid this point, the platform was linked to Discover Qatar. When the traveler makes a reservation for the quarantine hotel and attaches the reservation photos, the registration portal, through a specific technology, make sure that the hotel reservation is within the approved quarantine hotels, with the aim of facilitating the visitor and ensuring that his time and money are not wasted. All these procedures and the process of responding to the visitor’s application does not take more than 12 - 24 hours maximum.

Citizens of the GCC countries

Major Al Jasmi indicated that the hotel quarantine is a basic requirement for those coming from the countries with the red list from the Gulf Cooperation Council countries. If the visitor has a first-degree relative in Qatar, the home quarantine will be an alternative to the hotel quarantine, provided that the rest of the requirements are met.

To facilitate all travelers, some modifications have been made to the portal, including not requiring all travelers to upload a corona test certificate, because airlines are concerned to ensure that the traveler holds this certificate.

The portal is also the best way to approve vaccines for Qatari citizens who have received the vaccine outside the country, because once registration is done on the portal and attach proof of receiving approved vaccines, the data is entered into the Ministry of Public Health system. If not registered, the person is obliged to follow a series of procedures, visit a health center and submit papers in order to approve the vaccination. The holders of work visas who are vaccinated and didn’t register will need to book a hotel quarantine for 7 days. If he registers on the portal and attaches the approved vaccination certificate, the platform will specify for him that the hotel quarantine is for two days, not seven days.

Major Abdullah Al Jasmi confirmed that the pre-registration platform for those coming to the State of Qatar is concerned with approval and health procedures only. The approval obtained by the traveler through the platform does not mean legal approval to enter the State of Qatar. The traveler must meet the requirements of the law on entry and exit of expatriates and their residence. For example, the platform does not look into the validity of the passport and whether the validity of the passport is less than or more than three months, nor does it consider whether the resident has exceeded six months outside the country or not. Because these are legal procedures, but the platform is concerned with health procedures only. Therefore, the traveler must meet the legal requirements.

Source: MoI