As of 13 August 2026, AI can only partly check whether you need a visa for a business trip.

What to actually do

1. Hand it to a person

   The route this page recommends

   A person who owns the outcome does this end to end, worth it when the failure is dear.

2. Use a tool built for this

   Second choice

3. Do it yourself

   The distant third

   A chat interface, chat-fluent skill, and roughly 1 hour until you can act on the result.

   How to actually do it

   1. Open the GOV.UK foreign travel advice page for the destination and the destination government's official immigration or embassy website.
   2. Gather the passport nationality and type, destination, entry and exit dates, transit airports, and any previous visa refusal or immigration issue.
   3. Write down the business activities in practical terms, including meetings, training, site work, installation, sales, client work and who will pay you.
   4. Paste those facts into the prompt, then ask the chatbot to use and cite only the current official pages you opened.
   5. Open every cited immigration page and compare its nationality, purpose, duration, payment and transit conditions with your trip details.
   6. Use the official visa or travel-authorisation checker and save the result, application reference or confirmation page before booking.
   7. Ask your employer to confirm the work description, and contact the destination immigration authority or a UK immigration solicitor if the trip includes hands-on work, local payment or an activity the official guidance does not clearly cover.

   Prompt

   Check whether I need permission to travel for this business trip. Treat this as a preliminary research check, not a final immigration decision and not professional advice.
   
   My details:
   - Passport nationality: [insert nationality]
   - Passport type: [ordinary, diplomatic or other]
   - Where I am travelling from: [country]
   - Destination country and cities: [insert]
   - Entry date and departure date: [insert]
   - Transit countries and airports: [insert, or none]
   - Purpose of the trip: [describe the meetings, conference, training, site visits, installation, sales, paid work or other activities]
   - Who pays me and where my employer is based: [insert]
   - Whether I will receive payment from an organisation in the destination: [yes/no and details]
   - Previous visits, visas, refusals or immigration issues relevant to this trip: [insert, or none]
   
   Use only current official sources, prioritising GOV.UK for UK travel guidance and the destination government's immigration authority for the actual entry rules. Open and cite the relevant pages, with the page title and URL. Do not rely on travel blogs, search snippets or uncited general knowledge.
   
   Tell me separately:
   1. Whether I need a visa, an electronic travel authorisation, a work permit, a business visitor permission or no advance permission.
   2. Whether each planned activity is allowed under the stated permission.
   3. What applies to each transit country.
   4. Passport validity, blank-page, insurance, invitation-letter, proof-of-funds and onward-travel requirements stated by the official sources.
   5. Whether the answer changes with my passport nationality, trip length, payment arrangements or the exact work involved.
   6. The official application or checker link, if one exists.
   
   Quote or closely paraphrase the decisive official rule, identify anything you cannot establish, and give me a short list of facts I must confirm before booking. If the activities involve hands-on work, providing services to a local client, installation, training, journalism, paid performance, regulated work or anything outside ordinary meetings, say that I should ask the destination's immigration authority or a UK immigration solicitor before travelling. Do not guess, do not treat an airline website as the legal authority, and do not present a preliminary result as permission to enter.

   Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.