With popular destinations from the Caymans to Cuba still reeling from the devastation of this summer’s hurricanes, Caribbean islanders are no doubt relieved that the 2008 hurricane season officially ended Nov. 30. Yet for the region’s tourism industry, Fanny, Gustav, Hanna and Ike were mere drops in the bucket compared to the real threat on the horizon: financial disaster in the United States. Today, fewer tourists are booking cruises to Jamaica. In the Bahamas, sales at duty-free shops along Nassau’s Bay Street are flat. And in the Turks and Caicos Islands, a group of disgruntled Chinese construction workers recently took their Israeli bosses hostage after a Ritz-Carlton resort they were building fell through following the collapse of its chief backer, Lehman Brothers. In fact, the repercussions of this crisis on the Caribbean could be deeper and longer lasting than those caused by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks seven years ago.

Washingtonians often have a smug feeling that their fair city is the center of the universe. And that perception is certainly going to be reinforced come Jan. 20, when an expected 4 million out-of-towners descend upon the nation’s capital to attempt to attend the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama. It’s no surprise that with so many people flocking in, the 29,000 hotel rooms in the city and the 95,000 rooms in the Washington metropolitan area are just about sold out. In fact, most rooms were snapped up within days after the election — and we aren’t just talking rooms inside the Beltway. Many hotels within a 50-mile radius of the city are fully booked for the period between Jan. 18 and 21. Even campgrounds are filling up.

Hector Torres can pinpoint the “aha” moment when he realized the hotel business had changed. It was this past September, at the onset of the nationwide economic breakdown, and D.C. officials were readying for a massive convention bringing together thousands of African American MBAs from across the nation. Unexpectedly — and uncomfortably close to the big day — Pepsi pulled 450 delegates from the event, reportedly losing a massive amount of money for the hotels where their staff would have been staying. “If you could imagine being hit by a bath of ice water, that was the effect,” said Torres, vice president of Capital Hotels & Suites, which owns two hotels in Washington. “All of a sudden you had this real, daunting realization. Sometimes companies will pull their people from events but they do it discretely. But this was not like that at all. It was a very personal revelation for me.”