Tourists wanting to go to Algeria will be able to access the desert more easily.

Algeria has decided to exempt people traveling to the Algerian Sahara as part of organized trips from a prior visa and to allow them to obtain it upon their arrival in the country, the Interior Ministry announced on Wednesday.

This relaxation in the granting of visas for the Algerian Great South "is part of the measures taken by the public authorities to promote Sahrawi tourism", the ministry specified.

Only tourists arriving as part of visits organized “by approved Algerian travel agencies” will however be able to obtain their visa on arrival at the airport or at the border crossings.

Two million tourists per year on average

Algeria, which applies the principle of reciprocity in the granting of visas, with often tedious procedures to obtain one, is far from being a leading tourist destination, unlike its neighbors in the Maghreb, Morocco and Tunisia, despite its enormous potential.

The country only attracts about two million tourists a year on average, half of whom are Algerians residing abroad.

But a national tourism strategy has been put in place in recent years to develop this sector.


The country has many assets likely to attract tourists with 1,200 kilometers of coastline, endless mountain ranges and views in impregnable sites.

Its Sahara, the first region concerned by the granting of visas on arrival, is among the largest deserts in the world, where the national cultural park of Tassili is located, which extends over 138,000 km2.

Located in the governorate of Djanet, it is considered a real open-air museum containing rock engravings and paintings, sand dunes, mountainous reliefs, bodies of water, green spaces, and a rich fauna, in particular the avifauna.

A direct flight between Paris Charles de Gaulle airport and Djanet was made on December 18, with the first 64 French travelers on board, marking the resumption of this air link after twelve years of consecutive suspension following the hiker's assassination. Frenchman Hervé Gourdel in Kabylie by a jihadist group.

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