It seems to be that Embassies really are huge profit centres, in terms of the Visa fees that they charge. At an average rate of about R580,00 for a Schengen Visa, and with appointments having to be booked beforehand on the Internet and queued for, it seems that most Embassies are doing fairly well. They seem to turn over an application, from what I witnessed, about every 7 or 8 minutes, fitting at least 8 appointments into an hour and effectively each employee, while they are taking bookings, is bringing in at least R2 000,00 an hour! The hidden costs of a holiday are sometimes quite excessive and when you start adding together all these amounts, they really do eventually total up to quite an expense.