Boston Hotels —usually less busy right after the New Year holiday — are experiencing an upsurge in business due to the snowstorm.
Outside a Back Bay hotel amid the snowstorm, taxi driver Trihs Albaaz was having a great night ferrying customers from Logan Airport.
"The airport is busy," he said. "Now there are a lot of jobs at Logan."
"Bringing people here?" I asked him.
"Everywhere!" he replied.
A quick survey of hotels earlier in the day found that some were completely booked or nearly booked, but this also included no-shows — people who could not make it to Boston because of the Nor'easter. So at least earlier in the day at some hotels, there were rooms if folks needed them.
"If you need to stay you can stay," said one reservation agent at what is on most occasions is a bustling downtown hotel. "We have availability. Not a lot, but we have it."
But the situation changed quite a bit at 8 p.m. after Logan grounded all remaining flights in and out. New Yorker Dave Clegg was among a throng of people in line who needed a place to stay.
"We have a vacation home in Chatham, and my poor wife fell and broke her wrist," he said. "We went to the Cape Cod hospital. They couldn’t treat it. They needed an orthopedic specialist, so we came up to Boston and she’s getting out today and we can’t get home so we had to come here and stay here for a couple of nights."
On the other side of the revolving door, snow rained down like bullets, and Boston plows were out in force. Downtown streets were made passable, but Shelly Lanes and her family were worried about driving on the roads outside the city.
"We were in Vermont, and we planned on driving in tomorrow to hit our flight for tomorrow night, but when we saw the weather conditions we said, 'We better get to Boston before it hits,'" Lanes said.
At another downtown hotel, Armeda Wilson and Craig Mulhullen, visiting from Los Angeles wondered aloud if they would need to stay another night because of the storm.
"And our flight's around 5:30, so we'll see," Mulhullen said. "We have no backup, so we are concerned. We're not quite sure what's going to happen tomorrow … worse things can happen than being stuck in Boston for an extra day."
Outside the hotel in the back bay taxi driver Trihs Albaaz was on his way back to Logan. He figured between the airport and the Bruins game at the Garden he would pick up as many as 10 or more fares heading to Boston hotels before the storm let up.
"The town is empty," he said. "Only Logan."
