While many Canberrans clear out of the capital during summer, tourists are also flocking in for landmarks and getting a camp spot early for Summernats.
Steve and Kim Merrett came to Canberra for the New Year's Eve fireworks and plan to spend a week in the capital before going home to Sydney.
"We've been to Canberra before and love it, love the set up," Ms Merrett said.
The couple have been caravanning for five years since retiring and were eager to revisit Canberra to kayak on the lake and visit major attractions such as the war memorial, however noted the difficulty in finding a park site.
"This time of year it is hard getting in anywhere and this was the park that said 'yeah we've got vacancy'," Mr Merrett said.
Canberra Park operations manager Chris Annett said his 73-site park was at capacity until January 10.
"We're probably turning away I reckon on average 20 to 30 calls a day, the phone is constantly ringing," he said.
"Normally we only have one lady sitting [in reception] but there's three of us at the moment.
"For the summer, people come here to mainly see Canberra, a lot of our punters are transient people so they come in, see the sights of Canberra ... and then they head off to the next place."
Originally from Canberra and now a local of Long Beach, Jackie Knight said she came with her husband for medical reasons and to visit family and hopes the ACT further invests in more caravan sites.
"Canberra is not really RV friendly, and as long-term caravanners we can say that quite comfortably, there's very few options," she said.
"That is a big problem for caravanners, if you're just passing through, there are very few places that you can park for just a couple of hours."
In the ACT government's 2023-2030 tourism strategy plan, it's anticipated by 2030 the visitor economy will be worth $4 billion in annual expenditure of domestic and international visitors.
At the end of the 2021-22 financial year, tourism had provided $1.7 billion to the ACT economy.
Summernats owner Andy Lopez echoes the importance of tourism in the ACT and anticipates the January 5 to 8, 2023 car festival will be at its biggest since COVID.
"[Summernats] is worth over $30 million to the ACT economy over the four days, this is a particularly big year, we've sold out our car entries for the first time," he said.
"There's about 2700 cars coming to the event, in addition to the 100,000 people, so you'd find at the moment that every single place that offers accommodation in Canberra is sold out or close to it."
Attendees are one part of boosting tourism numbers to Canberra, but Mr Lopez also noted the set-up alone helped boost the economy.
"The team has been here since December 19 ... Exhibition Park has got a lot of permanent facilities, but a lot of the stuff that we do is temporary stuff," he said.
"You're building the the burnout pattern barriers all around the place and you'll see thousands of square meters of market structure that have been built too, so there's a couple of ten companies that are very happy to see us come back every year."
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