Types of financial support offered to AMICAL member attendees:

Registration fees (what’s included)

The registration fee covers participation in all conference events (program sessions, lunches, breaks and the all-conference dinner), as well as group transportation between the conference hotel and the campus on event days.

Hotel accommodations for AMICAL members

For AMICAL members outside of AUS and AUD, accommodation including breakfast will be provided at the conference hotel as follows:

Nights covered include those surrounding your conference attendance days. In your registration form, you may request additional nights before or after, but those additional nights will be at your own expense.

Some examples for the case of someone attending the 3 main conference days (March 31 through April 2):

• If you request a hotel arrival March 30 and departure April 3, we will cover all 4 of these nights.
• If you request a hotel arrival March 29 and departure April 4, we will cover the 4 nights of March 30, March 31, April 1 and April 2, and you will need to pay for the nights of March 29 and April 3.

Airfare support for AMICAL members

Coordinate with your AMICAL Representative before requesting support

According to AMICAL’s member agreement, member institutions are supposed to finance the participation of at least one person from their institution for the conference. We normally interpret that to mean at least one airfare, typically for the Representative, should be covered by your institution. The AMICAL Representative and other attendees from the same institution should coordinate to find out which, if any of you, can get your airfare covered by your institution.

We also recognize that some institutions are simply unable to provide any airfare funding in some years. If that’s the case for your institution, all of the individuals attending from your institution may, on an exceptional basis, request airfare support. In such a case, the Representative should explain the exceptional circumstances in their own airfare support request on the registration form. AMICAL cannot cover all attendees from all member institutions, so please try first with your institution to see if at least one airfare can be covered.

Request support via the registration form

If you have determined that your airfare cannot be covered by your institution, you may request airfare support in your registration form. You will need to indicate in the form your own estimate for the lowest available economy airfare for a reasonable itinerary from your departure city, so have this information prepared.

Wait for approval/instructions before booking

The organizers will review those requests and reply as soon as they are able to confirm whether your request can be approved, indicating any limits that are being applied to the amount of the support, and instructions for booking the reservation. To ensure that your flight can be covered, do not book your flight until you have received these instructions.

What’s a ‘reasonable’ itinerary? (Conditions and limits of support)

If approved, AMICAL will cover the lowest available economy airfare currently available for a ‘reasonable’ itinerary from your departure city to either Dubai (DXB) or Sharjah (SHJ).

Principles we use to decide whether an itinerary is ‘reasonable’ typically include the following:

• Direct flights should be preferred if they are not substantially more expensive than a flight with stops/connections.
• If direct flights are unavailable or substantially more expensive than a flight with stops or connections, the less expensive option with stops/connections should be used, in which case:
  • Minimal stops: The number of stops should be kept to a minimum for typical routes between the departure city and Dubai (DXB) or Sharjah (SHJ)
  • Relatively short layovers: The layover time should be kept to a minimum for typical routes between that city of origin and Dubai or Sharjah
  • Total travel time minimized within the norm: The total travel time should be kept to a minimum for typical routes between the departure city and Dubai or Sharjah
  • Day/evening departure and arrival times: The departure and arrival times should avoid times in the middle of the night (between midnight and 06:00) if possible, unless applying the requirements above requires such arrival/departure times

We will apply a maximum award amount based roughly on the conditions above. If the flight you end up taking exceeds this, you will need to cover the difference.