HOTEL MONACO & GRAND CANAL
15th to 18th, October 2018
CONVENTION & HOTEL UPDATE
The celebration convention for ten years of constant improvement of the packaged ice industry in Europe. As you all know by now, the hotel selected Hotel Monaco and Grand Canal is 150 meters from the iconic Piazza San Marco. The hotel has set aside a block of rooms for EPIA convention attendees. The rooms, however, will not be held indefinitely. The hotel only has fewer than 99 rooms total and we have “temporarily reserved” 70 of these along with another 20 at a sister hotel nearby. These rooms will be booked on a first come first served basis. What that really means is that in order to ensure you will have a room, you must book by 30 July 2018. Every few weeks after that date, the reserved rooms will be released from the EPIA blocked rooms. What this means is:
- you still might be able to get a room, but at full price which is more than twice the price that has been negotiated for EPIA convention attendees
- there will be no rooms available for the dates of the convention.
I tested this scenario myself last week and found no double rooms available to the public during the convention dates.
Take heed to enjoy the festivities surrounding the convention: gondola rides, mask making, “cichetti” bar hopping and enjoying the Venetian life with your EPIA colleagues.
The prices are:
- Double room in B&B for single use for 3 nights € 1065
- Double room in B&B per 3 nights € 1152
- City Tax per 3 nights to be paid at the hotel 5 € x 3 nights
HACCP UPDATE
Some of our members have third-party HACCP certifications and have asked if their specific certification meet the EPIA HACCP Standards. Your BoD has engaged a professional food safety expert to look at common HACCP certifications found in Europe and perform an objective analysis of which meet or exceed our EPIA HACCP Standards. There will be a product delivered showing the EPIA HACCP Standard and which other certifications meet our standard. Once completed in May, this analysis will be used to provide substantive documentation that the certification you currently have is sufficient to qualify packaged ice producers for EPIA membership.
There is a second part of this project which is to identify HACCP certification services in Europe which are qualified to conduct the EPIA HACCP certifications and updates. This list will be provided on the EPIA website for member reference.
We must be able to support our tagline “Ice you can trust”