BOSTON -- As Tropical Storm Earl moved out, tourists moved in -- and that was good news for Cape Cod businesses.

Labor Day Monday was a picture perfect day on the Cape from Chatham Light, to the beach, to a quaint little village in Barnstable. It was a big change from Friday when Hurricane Earl was threatening and tourists were canceling.

John Ormento is the manager of Pleasant Bay Village resort in Chatham.

"A few guests were concerned and chose to cancel on Friday night, and we went ahead and chose not to charge them a cancellation fee," he said.

Good thing because many of those same visitors woke up Saturday and changed their minds.

"Our phones started ringing at 6:30 asking us if there were any damage -- which we had walked around earlier and there's not a limb down -- and they all got in their cars and headed out," Ormento said.

While many hotels, restaurants and shops recouped some of their losses, there's no doubt Earl took a bite out of business. Still, Cape-wide, this year has shown dramatic improvement over last when the economic hurricane seemed to strike tourism all summer.

"We had a much, much better summer this year. Last year, because of the economy, and the poor weather -- we had a lot of rain -- business was off for some people as much as 30 percent. So this year, we've seen a rebound of anywhere from 10 to 20 percent," said Wendy Northcross of the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce.

Dennis Marder of New York planned for months to come and has no regrets.

"Made the move to come up on Saturday, which was a good idea -- turned out to be beautiful," he said.