The Package Visa: Saudi Arabia's New Door For The Green Passport

For years, the standing disappointment for the green passport was neatly summarised in one list: sixty-eight countries eligible for Saudi Arabia's tourist eVisa, Pakistan not among them. Umrah visas and embassy queues were the only doors. This summer, quietly, a third door opened — a pilot programme for seven nationalities, and Pakistan is on the list. The catch, if you can call it that: the visa only exists as part of a booked package. It is called the Package Visa, and it works exactly the way it sounds.

01 /What it actually is

Strip the branding away and the mechanism is simple — the visa is issued electronically against a travel package booked through the Kingdom's participating platforms:

• The route is live for seven nationalities — Pakistan sits alongside Bangladesh, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Jordan and Mexico.
• The package must bundle confirmed flights and accommodation together, with a four-star minimum on the hotel and dates that match.
• Trips run from two days to nearly three months, and one package can carry a full family group — up to nine adults and five children.
• Approval lands within a day or two of the completed booking, as a single-entry visa tied to the trip's dates.
• The platforms are the Kingdom's own travel channels — Reserval, Almosafer and Webook — not random third-party sites.

02 /The fine print that decides whether it suits you

• It is single-entry and date-locked: change or cancel the booking after the visa is issued, and the visa's validity is the first casualty.
• The platform enforces a minimum package value per traveller for the opening days, plus a per-day floor beyond that — the current thresholds are part of what we confirm with you live, because they move.
• It is built for comfortable short breaks, not backpacking — the four-star floor is structural, not snob.
• Insurance is bundled into the package's fee side, so the cover arrives with the visa rather than as an afterthought.

03 /Can you Umrah on it?

The tourist eVisa family officially covers Umrah outside Hajj season — that has been true since the tourist visa launched, and the package route delivers the same visa electronically. What we do at file time is confirm the Umrah clause on your specific booking, because a visa built around flights-and-hotel dates carries conditions worth reading. If the goal is purely Umrah, the Umrah visa still fits most families better — we wrote about how that instrument was recently rewritten, elsewhere in this journal. If the goal is Jeddah, alUla, the Red Sea and a couple of Umrah days folded into one proper trip, this is the door that was missing.

04 /The other doors, for context

The Package Visa doesn't stand alone — it joins a map that has been quietly filling in:

• The Umrah visa through licensed agents, now a one-year multiple-entry instrument — the workhorse for family pilgrimage.
• The transit stopover — four free days hiding inside a layover, the trick we told in our stopover entry in this journal.
• The side door that has existed for years: travellers holding valid US, UK or Schengen visas have sometimes found the visa-on-arrival lane open to them regardless of nationality — a lane to verify at booking time, never a promise to plan around.

05 /Who this door really suits

• The Dubai-fatigue family — the one that has done the malls, done the desert, and wants somewhere new that still books easily.
• The honeymoon that wants alUla or the Red Sea coast without an embassy file standing between the idea and the date.
• The passport-builders: every clean Saudi entry on the green passport strengthens the next file everywhere else — travel history is a quiet currency.
• And above all, the traveller who wants it handled: the visa exists only as part of a package, so an agency is not a luxury on this route — it is the mechanism the visa runs on. This is the most desk-shaped visa Saudi Arabia has ever issued.

HTG Travels Desk