Fwiw even timatic is wrong. I visited your link and entered India and Turkey as departure and arrival for Indian nationals.

The system advised me to apply for an eVisa, however eligibility criteria for eVisas is exclusive to folks who have a valid EU Schengen visa. Someone who casually relied on the result without reading further would have missed this.

The bottom line is travel is expensive and visa rejections have long lasting consequences. It is foolish to rely on anything except the official immigration department website of the country in question, or an official third party who is appointed by the government.

I don't think it's fair to say TIMATIC is wrong in this instance - it does say visa required and eVisa is acceptable. It did not say the eVisa can be obtained by everyone.

Sure but what good is selective, technically correct information for someone who would generally use this as part of making their travel plans. If you are going to end up checking official sources anyway, then you are better off with them.

I hope more people carefully read your comment.

This stuff is important and changes at the whims of bureaucrats and politicians - you need to check this yourself on the destination countries website unless it is a known quantity.

ie Canadians can probably rely on their travel status to the US if they aren't seeing something as a top story on the news. Similarly EU citizens can probably rely on the UK.. oh wait a sec.. Check this shit for unreliable countries !! (like the UK)

The official websites are not always up to date.

Well, it probably is inaccurate. But this is for airline officials to rely on to admit you onto the flight. Not definitive admissibility criteria by the country.

Probably if you are in such a situation you will quickly find out on trying to apply that you are not eligible.

While the OP's website for example (to take current news) doesn't even have an entry for Hong Kong.

Apologies for negativity in my post. I did not realize that OP him/herself had made this website and might have been a first effort.

Still, I think my points are valid. Unless this is a personal hobby or tinkering effort, I would advise the OP to invest his/her time on something that is sustainable and not already covered at 10x the expertise by an existing service (in a relatively stable industry, more importantly).

The country content pages contain 6 lines that look like the OP wrote them personally. That is not something that smacks of reliability.

What some people call “negativity” is in my opinion concise and honest feedback.

Personally, when I see “show hn” posts, this is a signal that the OP is asking for feedback and often due to time constraints or one’s personal writing style, some folks interpret straight to the point feedback as “negative” when in reality it is generally based on the responder wanting to help.

The problem is that visa policy is so complex, unless you rely on an authoritative source like TIMATIC it's not going to be right, and that's going to cause people to not book trips they would have -- or worse, book, expecting to go, and have to cancel.

For instance, China. It says that for US citizens a visa is required. That's half true.

* There's TWOV (transit without visa)

* Transit Visa On Arrival where if you're connecting to a third country within 24-144 hours depending which city you're visiting you can get a transit visa when you get there that entitles you to visit just the city in which you landed but not leave. [1]

* Hainan has a 30-day visa waiver program if you apply through a travel agency. [2]

* Hainan has a 30-day visa on arrival program. [2]

* Hong Kong and Macau are 90 days visa on arrival.

In this kind of international diplomatic space, accuracy matters more than anything else.

[1] https://www.travelchinaguide.com/embassy/visa/free-72hour/

[2] https://www.travelchinaguide.com/cityguides/hainan/visa-free...

Yes, Timatic (usually) doesn't go into that level of detail, though it does some detail AND you need to interpret it.

It will indicate Transit visa details if the country is indicated on the query as the transit country. If it's the destination then it will put the visitor requirements.

I did an example query to Hong Kong as a US citizen and Timatic returned the correct results (that the documentation you have is enough)

OP's website does not even have Hong Kong as a choice in the country/territory list.

You get an idea of how much work is required.

Your points are valid it's just the negativity is classic HN. I think this is partly due to HN design. When all you see is text and not the people writing them it is easy to be negative.

I agree on most of your points but just because there's a hard to use sub site on some airlines dealing with that doesn't mean there can't be an alternative. This site is probably not it based on the comments about the accuracy but there might be others available or coming in the future.

On top of that if people travel by train or other means it's not that obvious to look on the website of some airline.

Also it's someone sharing their site in a Show HN, constructive feedback (missing data, wrong information) would be helpful but "Why was this even a website worth posting about?" is not.

Literally there should NOT be a website like this, because even with slight misinformation, you can get in a lot of troubles: both financial and even more so safety wise if one of 10,000 info points on some tropical configuration of your citizenship, residency, passport type, stamps you have in your passport, plves you been, etc, will be not updated in time and you take it on its face value .

Furthermore, the owner does not and cannot give you any warranty whatsoever, even if this would be run on membership fees not advertising clicks. Im all for OP first website project and kudos for doing something beautiful and even more so getting it up on HN this high, but this site should not exist. Without this site there is more chances that someone who seeks this info will endup on legitimate site - hopefully government run or airline run, and not take this at face value and move on with packing their bags.

I mean, "this site should not exist" is being a little harsh, don't you think?

Yes misinformation is dangerous, but the author certainly could link to airline sites, the official government travel information websites for each country, and wikipedia and other resources. If you can't even think far enough ahead to come up with these constructive suggestions, then maybe you should try harder or just not comment.

> I mean, "this site should not exist" is being a little harsh, don't you think?

It's not overly harsh. When the cost of being wrong is this high, then this site (or any such site) should not be publicly available until it is reliable.

The World Wide Web sure ain't what it used to be. Let's have some internet content police so people don't accidentally hurt themselves. </s>

That is the plan! Also we are in the process of implementing api's for more accurate info

Timatic just expresses requirements.

There’s a big open space in « How to achieve those requirements ».

And Timatic mostly concerns itself with entry. The requirements to work is another big open space.

I don't think Timatic is foolproof either. It seems to work fine as long as the requirements are basic (have visa/duration of stay/visa on arrival) but it (or the people using it) seem to break down as soon you add any complexity.

I was travelling to a country which provided visa on arrival for 14 days, but my return ticket had a 1 month stay because I had a different ticket from that country to India after a week. Delta denied checking me in (took them more than an hour to solve the issue) at SFO and then Air France denied boarding me in Paris for my connection (took them 30 minutes to solve the issue).

I really don't see the why the negativity. While I agree that there's Timatic, there is nothing wrong in making something else that serves the same purpose. By your logic, every duplicate service in this world can be questioned.

> It includes such detail as country of travel origin, country of passport issuance, nationality, duration of stay, country of transit, visa/papers held.

Would have been nice had you commented this as a suggestion without that bashful tone, just my 2 cents.

Where can a person check in that website all the paperwork and procedures that one has to undergo to travel from country A to B ?

Do I have to subscribe and make an account just for that simple information?

Yep, also OP's site doesn't seem to hold correct information. For example Belarus->Argentina visa is not required.

Someday IATA will buy information as a service from them. HN is not for just latest biggest news, but also about when someone try something.