Travel, Site Access information & Accommodation

1. Book your travel tickets and get reimbursed for your other travel expenses ( concerns only reimbursed users)

The e-travel application “SAP Concur” will be available at the ESRF from March 2021.

All reimbursed users are required to submit a travel request in the application two weeks before arriving at the ESRF, at the latest. As a result, users are aware of the level of reimbursement before making their trip.

During the preparation of their travel request, reimbursed users are requested to book their pre-paid air/train tickets directly via SAP Concur. This booking populates the travel request header automatically, and users are then asked to complete their travel expenses estimation with any other type of travel expense.

The ESRF highly recommends that users download the SAP Concur mobile application, on their smartphone (accessible either from the App Store or Google Play) in order to facilitate their reimbursement claim procedure. This way, the traveling user will be able to take photos of his/her travel receipts (via this application) during their trip and get them certified automatically. Once certified by the application, these paper travel tickets are no longer required for their reimbursement by the ESRF.

Finally, SAP Concur enables the creation of the reimbursement claim from the approved request with automatically pre-filled expenses. The user will then be asked to upload the certified expense receipts and submit their claim electronically.

For users who don’t wish to use the SAP Concur mobile application, it is still possible to submit their reimbursement claim electronically via a computer but as the receipts won’t be certified by the application, they will have to scan each receipt individually and attach them to the corresponding expense in the SAP Concur application in order to submit their reimbursement claim and send the original paper travel expenses receipts via mail together with a paper version of the reimbursement claim from the SAP concur interface as they used to do in the past.

Several video tutorials and training documents have been created to guide you through these new procedures - we recommend that you watch them carefully before creating your first travel request (and reimbursement claim), to become familiar with the software.

If you need further help, please contact:

• SAP Concur User Service Desk
  For technical difficulties with the application.
  24/24, 7/7 - +33 (0)8.05.54.10.61 (France) ; +44 (0)2037.936933 (outside of France)
   
• ESRF Travel Office    or ESRF User Office 
  For assistance with your travel booking or reimbursement claim submission.
  Monday to Friday - from 8.00 to 12.00 and 13.00 to 17.00 - +33 (0)4.76.88.24.17

2. Site Access

You will find all the information about how to get to the ESRF on the EPN campus website.
 

By air

Grenoble is served by three airports:

• Lyon - Saint-Exupery Airport (formerly Satolas), with an hourly or half-hourly shuttle bus to Grenoble bus/train station (1 hour).  We advise you to buy your tickets online from the shuttle service "Ouibus":  http://www.ouibus.com
   
• Geneva - Cointrin Airport, with several shuttle buses per day to Grenoble bus/train station (2 hours). We advise you to buy your tickets online from the shuttle service "Ouibus" (from 1st March 2018):  http://www.ouibus.com
   
• Grenoble St. Geoirs Airport (seasonal)
   

By train

Grenoble is well served by trains from throughout France and Europe, including direct TGV from Paris (3 hours).
 

By car

Reimbursement for travel by car is subject to the reimbursement rules for users receiving ESRF financial assistance. Go to the page Financial Assistance.

For additional information, consult the "Travel Rules" in the "ESRF User Policies and Rules"

3. Visa requirements

If you hold a passport from a non-European country, you will probably need a visa to come to ESRF for your experiment. More information can be found here.