Singapore will become one of the easiest countries to visit, as starting in the second half of the year, visitors will be able to enter the country using automated lanes, facilitating checking procedures for all visitors, regardless of their nationality.
The Asian country will be the first country to enable its visitors to enter without having to register beforehand or present a passport before leaving, VisaGuide.World reports.
The whole check-in process will be completed by using an authentication token, which makes carrying physical documents, such as passports and plane tickets, less troublesome.
A change to the Immigration Bill and efforts to enhance digitalisation efforts and strengthen border control are the main reasons behind the new measures, which are making Changi Airport the first passport-free hub in the world.
More than 160 automated lanes were installed in 2023, with another 230 lanes to be set up in 2024. Currently, the automated lanes can be used only by Singapore residents and passport holders from 60 countries.
According to the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA), there was a notable surge in traveler numbers in 2023, with nearly 193 million individuals passing through all checkpoints. This is up by an 84 percent increase compared to 2022 when approximately 105 million travelers were evident across all checkpoints.
Regardless of the increased activity, the total number of travelers in 2023 fell slightly below the 2019 levels when 217 million travelers were cleared across all checkpoints.
While air traffic has yet to improve, ICA noted that the volume of travelers at land checkpoints during school and public holiday periods had exceeded the pre-pandemic levels since the borders reopened in 2022.
During these periods, traffic through Woodlands and Tuas checkpoints recorded nearly 13.6 million travelers, averaging around 440,000 travelers on a daily basis. Before the pandemic, approximately 400,000 travelers were cleared at the land checkpoints daily.
The experience of the travellers did not suffer and, in fact, generally improved, including in clearance times, due to the ICA’s ongoing transformation of border clearance by deploying more automated lanes and allowing more visitors to use these lanes.
However, the new measures might have surfaced some irregularities as ICA reported that more cases of contraband, forged travel documents and immigration offences were recorded in 2023.
Contraband cases went up by 23 percent, from 35,000 in 2022 to 43,000 in 2023, while forged travel document cases tripled although at lower numbers (65).
In addition, ICA said the rise in immigration offences could be related to the easing of travel restrictions and an increase in its intelligence-led operations, from an average of 40 a month in 2022 to 58 in 2023.