For hotel owners, the hurricane hasn’t caused mass cancellations, but it has made some people nervous. Jeff Popkin of Needham ditched his reservations on the high-speed ferry from Hyannis to Nantucket, as well as his Friday and Saturday night reservations at Nantucket Inn. “It doesn’t sound like the safest place to be this weekend,’’ he said.
The Nantucket Inn is still sold out, to general manager Scott Thomas’s surprise, partly due to the utility repair crews and media moving in to cover the hurricane. The summer season hasn’t been record-breaking, Thomas said, but it has been an improvement, and he was hoping to add to it before rain and 80-mile-an-hour gusts were forecast for tonight.
“Why would you want to come and sit in your room in the rain in the dark?’’ he said.
Despite an unsettling end to the summer, overall it has been a better season than last year, with a slowly rebounding economy and hot, dry weather driving up hotel occupancy 10 percent in June and July around the state.
“That means that Massachusetts is almost back to where it was’’ before the recession, said Betsy Wall, executive director of the Massachusetts Office of Travel & Tourism. “In our industry, that’s a headline.’’
On Martha’s Vineyard, restaurants and shops are still feeling the pinch, said Nancy Gardella, executive director of the Martha’s Vineyard Chamber of Commerce, but on the whole, this summer has been much better than last.
“We’ve entered into the new normal, so it’s no longer comparing to five years ago, it’s comparing to last year,’’ she said. “And compared to last year, people are breathing a lot easier.’’
But business owners weren’t breathing very easy as they prepared for today’s deluge. Workers at the Chatham Bars Inn battened down the hatches, moving the patio furniture inside and taking down the awnings. General manager Paul Zuest, who said this has been the inn’s best summer ever, took the storm — and the handful of cancellations it caused — in stride.
