Hopping between Gulf countries could soon be as easy as traveling through Europe’s Schengen Area: just flash your passport at the entry point and seamlessly travel from one country to the next—no extra paper work required.
Six countries in the Persian Gulf region recently agreed to create a shared visa for travelers, meaning foreign tourists would need just a single passport visa to enter all six of the neighboring nations.
The participating countries include the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Qatar—meaning tourists could soon visit Dubai and Abu Dhabi in the UAE, see Saudi Arabia’s ancient city of Diriyah or the intricately hewn sandstone tombs at Hegra, and camp bedouin-style in the Qatari desert all in one fell swoop—without the bureaucratic headache of multiple visa applications. The only Gulf country to not participate in this is Iraq.
These six nations already have close ties, and together make up the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), a…