Companies in Switzerland submitting visa requests for travel to China should note a change in points of contact from this week. A notice posted by the Chinese Visa Application Service Centre (CVASC) states that, effective Monday 14 September, telephone and e-mail inquiries for the Zurich branch will be handled centrally by the Bern centre. Walk-in filing and collection services in Zurich continue unchanged. The consolidation is part of a broader efficiency drive across Europe, where smaller CVASC offices are moving to shared back-office platforms ahead of an expected uptick in visa demand during the autumn Canton Fair and year-end sourcing season. The Zurich centre already offers a ‘two-way courier’ option for applicants exempt from fingerprinting, and the Bern team will now oversee service-quality monitoring and procedural guidance for both locations. For mobility managers, the immediate impact is procedural: staff should update contact directories, ensure that courier labels reflect the new e-mail routing, and brief travellers to allow extra turnaround time while call volumes shift. CVASC reiterated that short-stay visa applicants remain exempt from fingerprint collection until at least 31 December 2026, further easing the submission process for frequent flyers. The move signals Beijing’s confidence in digitalising visa intake but also its intent to rationalise physical office footprints abroad. Similar restructuring has already occurred in Milan and Lyon, and more European cities are expected to follow.
