Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have entered a new era of tours, potentially becoming a second option for countries struggling to secure an official royal visit in collaboration with the U.K. government, a British news show has heard, as the couple began a four-day tour of Colombia on Thursday.
Harry and Meghan were invited to visit Colombia by the country's vice president, Francia Márquez, to experience the nation's rich cultural heritage and engage on the subjects of childhood internet safety and the Invictus Games veterans event.
As the couple stepped down from their roles as working royals in 2020 and moved to the U.S. they no longer conduct official duties on behalf of the monarchy or the British government, meaning that any work or visits they undertake is done in a purely private capacity.
While this may seem like a potential step down for the couple, who once toured Commonwealth nations in the name of Queen Elizabeth II and her government, it actually allows them a greater freedom to go wherever they wish without constitutional or diplomatic barriers.
Speaking to LBC News radio in Britain on Friday, Newsweek's chief royal correspondent, Jack Royston, responded to a question as to whether this new style of royal tour showed there was a "two-tier" system, one for official tours of working royals and the other for unofficial tours of non-working royals, like Harry and Meghan.
"We certainly have a situation where if a country has been struggling to get the British royal family to conduct an actual official royal visit on behalf of Britain and the Foreign Office, then they do have another option, which is to go to Harry and Meghan and try to recreate the choreography of a formal royal visit, and this absolutely has been that," he said of the Colombia trip.
"The exchange of gifts when Harry and Meghan arrived in Bogotá yesterday really was very reminiscent of a formal royal visit and to an ordinary person there's no difference."
"There really isn't, because all of the kind of diplomatic aspects to it can be provided by Colombia," he added. "Everywhere they're going, they're going with the vice president of Colombia, which means that it's very easy for Colombia to kind of recreate the feel and dynamics of an actual visit by the monarchy on behalf of the British Government, which is obviously not what this visit by Harry and Meghan is.
"I think, to ordinary Colombians, it's a case of trying to distinguish between Coke and Pepsi... It's very, very, very similar. So yeah, I think there are going to be other visits of this kind that have that choreography and have that look to them."
This is not the first overseas visit made by the duke and duchess since their split from the monarchy, but it is the most closely arranged with the office of the head of state.
In May, the couple took part in a three-day visit to Nigeria after receiving an invite from the country's chief of defense staff. It was closely aligned with Nigeria's participation in the Invictus Games, which Harry co-founded in 2014.
The Colombia visit was initiated at the invitation of Márquez. In a press conference on Thursday, as reported by the Telegraph, Márquez said she had first been inspired to invite Meghan after watching her 2022 Netflix docuseries about the highs and lows of her experiences since entering the royal family.
James Crawford-Smith is Newsweek's royal reporter, based in London. You can find him on X (formerly Twitter) at @jrcrawfordsmith and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.
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