A Year Later, the Diary is Filling Up

“I’ve been in the events’ sector for 30 years, and 17 years ago I opened the Kala venue on the outskirts of Kiryat Haim, which stretches over three acres of land. Later on, I brought in a partner, and today there are two large and opulent venues there, each of which has a garden and a pool with the chuppah on the water. Before last March, we employed 170-200 staff in total—waiters, cooks, bar staff, cleaning staff and more—and then COVID-19 caught us by surprise, and we had to shut down the venue overnight. Most of the staff were furloughed at the start of the first lockdown, apart from a few who we continued to employ in maintenance, gardening and security.

“After the first lockdown, in mid-June, we opened up for two weeks—and then we had no events at all for almost a year. It is not easy to reopen a large venue like ours, so with hindsight, had we known that that would be the situation, we would not have bothered reopening at all. Throughout the year, we did almost nothing beyond maintenance and upkeep and dealing with 200 couples who had to change their dates time and again. Eventually, we realized it was unlikely to end any time soon, so we decided it would be better to wait for the vaccines and to delay the reopening.

“At the end of the third lockdown, in March, we started with two weeks of events that were already in our diaries, and then we had another enforced break due to the Counting of the Omer. Now we are back to being hard at work, but we are having to cope with staff who don’t want to come back from furlough, and that’s without getting into the issues we had in March, when we had to rely on an external contractor to provide us with workers. On the other hand, some of the full-time staff have been here for many years, and they understand that in order to hold on to their jobs, they have to come back from furlough. So the diary is filling up again, progress looks good, and we have to hope that it stays that way.”

The writer is the co-owner of “Kala” event halls and gardens.

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