Caravan park vigilantes have been reporting NHS workers to the police mistakenly thinking they are breaking the strict lockdown rules.
Many hotels and holiday parks across the country have been providing accommodation for NHS workers who are unable to live at home while they work due to the risk to their families.
But worried locals in rural communities nervous at the prospect of visitors, after weeks of tourists being told to stay away,have been checking up on who is coming and going into parks and then alerting authorities.
Director-general of the British Holiday and Home Park Association, Ros Pritchard, says the negative, anti-feeling is "going to be an issue" when parks reopen.
She said: "When we've got holiday parks, say with NHS workers because we've been accommodating key workers when we could, we've had vigilantes checking up and reporting them to the council and the police - who are these people on your holiday park, what are they doing there?"
She added: "There are a thousand different reasons why NHS workers are staying with us.
"The attitude is 'what are they doing?' 'Where have they come from?' It's indicative of the challenge we're going to have when they restart the economy.
"I get it, I really get do because I live in the West Country.
"Emotions are running high, people are frightened. It's quite understandable but it needs proper management."
In North Wales police are probing allegations a care worker staying at a caravan park was verbally abused by a group of demonstrators who mistook them for a holidaymaker.
The care worker was said to have been terrified by a group who had been shouting "tourists go home" or words to that effect outside the Seldons Golden Gate Holiday Park in Towyn, Abergele.
It is understood the owner of the site has made a number of caravans to frontline NHS staff and carers.
A source told North Wales Live that "vigilantes" had thronged near to the entrance of the park.
The source said the health worker had been mistaken for a tourist and was subjected to abusive shouting.
And in Cornwall a woman, not an NHS worker, had gloss paint poured over her car and believes the act of vandalism, which has caused hundreds of pounds worth of damage to her yellow VW Beetle convertible, was carried out by someone who mistakenly thought her family were holidaymakers who had visited Duporth, near St Austell, during the lockdown.
Sue Skyba, 63, told Cornwall Live : “I can only assume people thought it was someone on holiday. My son has an auto immune disease and my neighbour has kindly let him move into his holiday home as we have to self-isolate due to returning from abroad.”
Ms Pritchard said that Government leadership is required in order for the message to switch from telling people to stay at home to encouraging visitors when the time is right.
"We have got to be so careful because it's a town and country thing," Ms Pritchard explained.
"The towns have the virus and the countryside doesn't want it.
"You only have to look at the coronavirus data to see what happens when you go further outside the M25.
"It's about population density and domestic tourism is about people going from towns into our beautiful countryside.
"You have to be sensitive to that. There are a lot of older people in the countryside because they have retired.
"A shop owner from a small market town said to me the other day he was desperate for the missing tourists to return because they keep shops alive.
"It's far bigger than just the holiday parks. It's a tourism eco- system. People staying at sites will spend money in pubs, shops and on public transport - the virus has broken this.
"You've got to look at the bigger picture, but you've got to be sensitive because people are dying. "
Ms Pritchard believes that phasing is the key to getting locals used to holidaymakers again.
"It's not about timing, that’s something for the prime minister and the scientists - it's about phasing," she said.
"If you do it in phases and open low risk areas of tourism earlier you would get a gentle trickle with locals getting used to holidaymakers being around again."
Ms Pritchard said while a similar sentiment had occurred at the time of the foot-and-mouth outbreak, it cleared up quickly, noting that a second wave of coronavirus could make things much more difficult.
She said: "Foot-and-mouth didn't come back again.
"If we get a second wave (of Covid-19) we're looking at a completely different scenario. If we don't get a second wave, things settle down, people will get used to having their tourists back."
