Passport Report Data and Method

Source

The La Vida Passport Value Report is derived from publicly available data from various sources including Wikipedia, World Tourism Organisation, OECD and others. With this data we are able to combine, summarise, cross check and apply our models to produce valuable information on key statistics, including visa free access by world GDP % and Travel Popularity %. This “value” approach gives an added dimension to a simple but valuable count of the number of visa free countries. It presents the quality for any particular passport of the visa free access it presents. We then go further by combining two passports to assess the added value of the second passport for the investor.

USE and limitation

The area of visa free travel is complex and in many ways subjective. In between the extremes of a visa and no visa lie “visa on arrival”, “evisa” “eTA” and other requirements for entry. Our analysis should not be relied on for assessing entry for a particular trip. (For this we recommend checking a source such as the IATA ). It is an aggregate of data to give an approximation of a passport’s worth in the sense we describe. Travellers should also bear in mind temporary or transient restrictions such as those imposed for Covid. Our analysis does not take these into account.

Our analysis is geared towards potential clients who may be seeking an additional citizenship and hence passport through investment and wish to compare on a consistent method the countries and what they offer. Our decisions on what is or is not included within the data derive from this objective. For example:

Host Country. This is counted in our analysis. If you are born and have always lived in Austria you are not interested in visa free access to Austria. Many passport indices would not count the host country. If you are investing to gain an Austrian passport then we think Austria is important to you and should be accounted. Hence the inclusion of host countries.

eTA. Electronic Authorisation. Again these are counted. In the case of an Austrian passport you can gain access to the USA but require an eTA (or ESTA). Although not entirely free of paperwork it gives an advantage over many passports and in these such cases of advantage we have counted the destination as visa free.

Our analysis counts both countries and territories. Many organisations do not always agree on the number of countries in the world. We have taken this as 199. That is a recognised and perhaps undisputed 195 plus Taiwan, Kosovo, Cook Islands and Niue.

Likewise we have included 28 territories. Again many of these have their own visa access and they certainly have their own GDP and Travel Statistics. Hence their importance when assessing the total percentage of worldwide access.

We urge anyone using our analysis to consider it as just one tool, albeit an important component, in helping make their assessment. If there is any doubt as to our analysis please do speak to your consultant who will have prepared the report for you and can help in explaining the data further.