What a first business trip needs that a tourist visa doesn't cover

Business visa requirements are the first thing that trips up a first-time traveler, mainly because the wrong visa type is easy to obtain and hard to fix once discovered at the border. A business visa, not a tourist visa, is generally required for meetings tied to a commercial deal, and the supporting documentation, an invitation letter from the local company, proof of the meeting's purpose, is worth having ready before departure rather than requested at the last minute.

Verifying who you're actually meeting matters more on a first trip than on a return visit. A meeting arranged through an unfamiliar intermediary is worth a basic check before travel: does the company exist, does the person you're meeting hold the title they claim, is the meeting location a real business address. That verification step is the same work our vendor verification service does for suppliers, applied here to a counterparty instead.

The checklist covers the visa, documentation, and verification steps in one page. For a first trip built around a specific set of meetings and counterparties, a consulting session ahead of travel, booked by the hour, is often the fastest way to close the remaining gaps. Book a consulting session.