LEAVING HOME-ICRON
At the end of November, Kathy Corby, a retired ER doctor, was feeling uneasy. She had purchased a renovated 19th-century house near Woodstock, NY, and was planning on renting it much of the time, but it was nearly Thanksgiving, and she had very few winter customers.
“I was really worried because there were so few bookings for January and February, but suddenly things picked up, and now it’s filled,’’ the Philadelphia resident told The Post. “I actually wanted to go there at least one week a month, but it’s so busy, I can’t do that.”
After the mass exodus of New Yorkers fleeing the city in 2020 due to COVID-19, many began returning this year, encouraged by diminished cases and emboldened by vaccines. East End hamlets and upstate towns returned to their cold-weather quiet. Then came the Omicron variant, and the city is once again a disease epicenter. By Christmas weekend, daily positive tests in New York were approaching 50,000. Holiday flights and vacations were canceled, and people began to retreat.
Hamptons here we come
Hotels outside NYC are now seeing an uptick in visitors. “Our bookings increased 30 percent over pre-pandemic levels for this winter, and we have well over a million dollars in advance bookings for 2022,” said Dede Gotthelf, owner of Southampton Inn. “In the last two weeks, we had a very steep pickup with guests booking more frequent and longer stays.”
The Capri hotel in Southampton had closed until spring, but now owner Michael Pitsinos is “planning to reopen this winter” due to Omicron, he said.
Holly Corey, 53, a yoga teacher who lives on the Upper West Side, had been staying out East since the onset of the pandemic, but moved back to the city in the fall.
“I had lunch with a friend, and she called a couple days later to say she tested positive,” Corey said. “Then I went to yoga and got an e-mail that someone in class tested positive. At that point, I left [for] a friend’s house in Southampton.’’
Long Island City resident Diego Fernandes Farias and his wife, Mayra Lopes, who works for the
United Nations, picked the Catskills as their escape destination. “Even though we want to be isolated, I have to walk our dog several times a day, and I will feel safer in the woods than in a crowded city park,’’ said Farias, a 35-year-old financier. “We booked a week, but we may extend if it doesn’t feel safe to return.”
The couple reserved their cabin through Red Cottage Inc., which operates retreats in the Catskills and Hudson Valley. “People’s plans blew up all over the place and they had to pivot, so we’ve gotten a wave of lastminute requests,’’ said Jennifer Grimes, the company’s owner. “Early January would have been a dead time for us, but we now have a bunch of weeklong stays scheduled.”
Ariella Duker, a 40-year-old interior designer who lives on the Upper East Side, was one of those pivoters. She canceled her trip to Barbados in favor of a bunch of weekends at high-end hotels, including the Mayflower Inn & Spa in Washington, Conn., and Troutbeck in Amenia, NY.
“With everybody freaking out, I decided to lay low,’’ she said.
Staying put in Florida
Many who did get on flights to Florida over the holidays have decided to stay put rather than return north. “This year, we saw 20 to 25 percent of the customers postpone their return to New York and stay in Palm Beach or Miami,” said Melissa Tomkiel, president of Blade Urban Air Mobility, the private aircraft service.
With many people scheduled to return after New Year’s, Tomkiel expects another round of flight postponements this week.
Corby, too, had a New Year’s cancellation, but it was due to a family emergency, and she immediately had requests for her house, which was re-rented in minutes.
“I never booked so quickly,’’ she said. “It’s weird to be making money off another COVID surge, but I’m glad to be able to provide a safe haven.”
‘We may extend if it doesn’t feel safe’