The quiet revolution in travel over the last decade: countries that never required visas of trusted nationalities now require authorisations — quick online screenings tied to your passport, without which the airline will not let you board. They are cheap and fast, which is exactly why people forget them until the check-in desk.
The family resemblance
The US ESTA ($21, two years), Canada's eTA (CA$7, five years), the UK's ETA, Australia's eVisitor/ETA (free), and Saudi Arabia's EVW for British travellers all share a shape: an online form, a small fee or none, approval usually in minutes to hours, validity spanning multiple trips, and screening questions with legal weight. Europe's ETIAS belongs to the same family and has been postponed repeatedly — check its live status rather than assuming.
What they are not
An authorisation is not a visa and not an entitlement: the border officer still decides admission. It also does not change what you may do — an ESTA visit is a visit, not a remote-work permit, however common the confusion.
The mistakes that actually strand people
- Applying at the airport. Most approvals are fast; a random minority go to manual review measured in days. "Usually instant" is not "guaranteed instant".
- New passport, old authorisation. These attach to the passport number. Renew the passport and the ESTA/eTA dies with the old one.
- Answering screening questions optimistically. Refusals, arrests and certain travel histories are asked about under penalty. A truthful inconvenient answer routes you to a visa; a false convenient one, discovered, poisons every future application.
- Third-party markups — see our copycat-websites guide; this alphabet is their favourite hunting ground.
Our practice: we check which authorisation your trip needs across every leg — including transits, which have their own rules — and file them properly. It is quick work, which is why it is cheap; the value is in never finding out at the desk.