Brian Calhoon
Co-owner
www.brasswoodptown.com @brasswoodptown
On April 13, 2020, my husband and I closed on the sale of our new business to embark on an entirely different career: We left our life in Boston to run a bed & breakfast in Provincetown, Massachusetts. (The Ides of March paled in comparison to this fateful day.) Just a few days prior, we had sold our condo, left our stable jobs, salaries, pension and benefits to become innkeepers in a tourist town at the height of closures due to the Covid-19 pandemic. When we arrived at our new home, a beautiful Victorian mansion with over 175 years of history in her bones, we stood on the front porch and looked out over an empty Commercial Street and thought, “$#!%...what have we just done?” Like so many Americans, we too were working from home, but that was the plan all along: We live at the inn, so our home is also our place of work. To say the pandemic had its share of silver linings is an understatement. Sure, we weren’t able to open for months, and we had more cancellations and refunds than we care to remember, but we survived our first season — and are still smiling.
Brasswood Inn FAGRAGMAG.COM
In a typical year, we would hit the ground running with non-stop bookings and a flurry of return guests. In 2020, the slow start to the season allowed us to step more gently into a new industry and learn on the job. The lack of certainty and a cautious rate of new bookings made it difficult to build budget projections. We essentially threw our original business plan out the window and had to start from scratch. But we were delighted to find that our neighbors (many of whom are fellow innkeepers) were happy to share their experience and commiserate while we shifted gears to meet CDC guidelines. These long-time business owners were having to craft new approaches to serve their customers while we were simply learning how to do it for the first time. We only know how to run an inn during a pandemic. Still, we found ourselves busier than expected. Many guests were eager to get out of their homes and happy to respect 24
