All main-conference speakers of at least 60-minute sessions are entitled to have their travel and accommodation expenses covered. Workshop instructors who are not speaking at the main conference may have their accommodation covered. This page sets out the details of this policy.
Do I need my expenses covered?
Speakers whose employers (or even the speakers themselves) are able to cover their travel and accommodation expenses are encouraged to do so. We want to open speaking opportunities to everyone, but must also balance this with fact that this is a community event with a limited budget. If you or your employer will cover your expenses, to show our appreciation, we will offer you Travel & Team sponsorship for free.
What and how should expenses be claimed?
For travel expenses you should generally book yourself and claim the cost back after the event. A simple email summarising the costs incurred and copies of any receipts should be sufficient. If this is difficult, financially, please let us know and we can usually reimburse costs earlier, or book on your behalf.
Please note that we only cover travel for one person per accepted talk. For partners or co-speakers we can cover accommodation on a best-effort basis - please check with us early if this is the case.
For accommodation, we'll book you into the speaker's hotel - please let us know your preferred dates as soon as possible after acceptance (this information will be collected in a post-acceptance form). We generally cover three nights for regular speakers, or 4-5 nights for speakers who are also doing a workshop. We may be able to cover an extra night on a case-by-case basis - e.g. if you are travelling on a long-haul flight.
Limitations
We feel it is important to be able to cover speaker travel for those that do not have an employer covering their expenses. But these costs have become so significant that in recent years the ACCU conference has been unable to pay them at all!
We are pleased to be able to cover them again, now, but we are still operating on small margins. Therefore, the following figures should be considered hard limits - i.e. we will pay up to these amounts, even if your expenses are higher.
We appreciate that it is not always possible to come in within these limits and hope to be able to offer more flexibility in the future. Please take this into consideration when submitting and do reach out if anything is unclear.
- Within the UK: Up to £100
- Within Europe: Up to £350
- Middle East (inc. Israel) £450
- Rest of the world: Up to £1000
The above figures include local transfer, where applicable.