It's been almost a year since the inaugural Whisky Web conference, and the team have been working tirelessly to bring you an event this year that we hope will exceed your expectations. Although a few members of the team are regular conference attendees, none of us have experience at organising events like this. But we do think we have a good idea of what makes a memorable and engaging conference; and your feedback from the first conference would suggest we got things right the first time around.

Our aim has always been to provide something a little different to that of a more conventional conference. But our vision won't always be shared by our delegates, and we make mistakes, errors of judgements.

This year, we thought it might be rather fun to host a residential conference in a castle... why not?! We've priced our tickets commensurate with other conferences, but thought we'd go the extra mile by including accommodation at Airth Castle in to the bargain; that way, our delegates can enjoy the evening party without having to worry about arranging transport to a hotel. Unfortunately the venue only has a limited number of rooms available, so some of the tickets are for shared accommodation for the night.

Unfortunately a number of people have expressed concern that this arrangement is unfairly excluding those who live locally in Edinburgh, Glasgow and the surrounding areas. We understand that it might be seen that we are only catering to those who are travelling from afar, and ignoring those who may want to attend the conference but not the party, and instead make their own arrangements to travel home or to an alternative hotel. This certainly wasn't our intention. Indeed, the same argument could be made wherever we chose to host the conference, were we to insist on including accommodation in the ticket cost.

We're sorry if we've excluded you, we didn't mean to. Our only intention was to organise an everything-included residential experience. We have however listened to your concerns, and are offering a new ticket costing £125 which will give you access to the conference without accommodation. This ticket includes travel to, and from Edinburgh on the Friday and Saturday, and of course we'd be delighted if these ticket holders can make it to the after-party, although understand that they may chose not to due to alternative travel and accommodation arrangements.

-- The Whisky Web Team