Regional Victorian holiday-makers are flocking to Central Victoria and throwing a lifeline to accommodation businesses.
The next two weeks hold the public holiday long weekends of the Grand Final and the Melbourne Cup.
Wendy James, who runs the Boort Lakes Holiday Park, 100 kilometres north-east of Bendigo, said she went from zero occupancy to 100 per cent in one day.
"The phone just started ringing and hasn't stopped," she said.
"Caravans are turning up; it has been absolutely overwhelming."
Matt Keating runs the Rochester Motel with his wife, Meagan, and said they were sitting around 50 per cent occupancy heading into the next two weeks.
"And then we would generally get overflow tourism from Bendigo and Echuca being the major towns. It's pretty solid at the moment," he said.
"We're still vetting people from the Melbourne area obviously with all the COVID-19 regulations, so we can't allow anyone from Melbourne to stay with us."
But as metropolitan Melbourne begins its path out of Stage 4 restrictions, regional Victorians are lapping up their freedom to move around under softened Stage 3 rules.
Accommodation sites say holidaymakers from Gippsland and the Bellarine Peninsula are choosing to spend their upcoming long weekends in Central Victoria.
Mr Keating said the silo art trail was attracting intrastate travellers to Central Victoria, and there were checks and balances in place to prevent people from metropolitan Melbourne staying in regional Victoria over the long weekends.
"So if people book online, if they don't provide an address we will contact them and ascertain one just to make sure we're doing the right thing and they're doing the right thing," he said.
"And then on check-in we will check identification with the address on there just to make sure they are doing the right thing."
Ms James said the return of travellers meant she had been able to re-hire two people she had laid off during the height of the pandemic and hoped to hire more support staff if the trend continued.
