Tourism is slowly picking up in the Limestone Coast region, despite the ever present COVID-19 restrictions.

Caravan parks are reporting a gradual uptick in bookings during the school holidays, but are far from overflowing, according to several park owners from the region.

Tourism operators say they are experiencing a flow of intrastate visitors, but they are missing the traditional Victorian influx at this time of year.

Mount Gambier Visitor Centre Tourism Officer Madeleine Brooks said the centre had experienced increasing numbers.

“It has been wonderful to see an increase of visitors to the region during the school holidays,” she said.

“We have seen a 60 per cent increase in visitors to the centre from September 2020 when compared to the previous month, August 2020.”

Southern Ocean Tourist Park manager Heidi Prouse said the long weekend was busier than previous months.
“We have been busy over the school holidays, but nothing crazy,” she said.

“People are looking forward to having a break. “We are missing our Victorian visitors at this time of the year, we usually have a lot of them come over, so that has affected us.”

Mrs Prouse said a lot of visitors to their Beachport park were from Mount Gambier, but the majority were from Adelaide.

“Our October long weekend is normally busy, but it is not as busy this year due to not having that Victorian school holiday rush as well. That’s where we are down a bit,” she said.

Port MacDonnell Foreshore Tourist Park manager Adam Sprakel said bookings were steady, and he could see them starting to pick up.

“School holidays have been good, we would always love it to be full,” he said.

“We usually get a lot of Victorians coming through, but there are no backpackers around. We used to get a lot of one-night bookings.

“There are still plenty of South Australians, some are coming from Port Augusta, Adelaide, the Barossa.

“A lot of them are coming from Adelaide way, plus there are a lot of locals from Mount Gambier. We are missing the Victorians who would have been here a week before our school holidays.”

Penola Caravan Park owner and manager Henk Bruins said while the long weekend saw good bookings, prior to that business was very slow.

“We would have more Victorians than Adelaide normally, and people from New South Wales as well,” he said.

“It’s difficult, but there are a lot of people worse off. We’ve been lucky that we’ve had a lot of tradespeople in, that’s been really good.

“Overall we are down about 30 per cent. But some people are shut, so it’s relative, there are many people worse off than we are.”