Shepparton’s tourist hotspots had one of the biggest weekends ever on the Queen’s Birthday long weekend, while most accommodation places were fully booked.
Museum of Vehicle Evolution executive officer Peter Hill said Sunday was one of the busiest days the museum had experienced since opening in September last year.
“It was almost a record day,” he said
“It would be one of the top three days.”
According to Mr Hill, numbers at the museum were also really strong on Saturday too.
Of the visitors to MOVE, Mr Hill estimated about 60 per cent would have come from outside the Shepparton area, something he said was great for the region.
Mr Hill was especially pleased that such high visitor numbers were individual visitors and not even bolstered by members from visiting car clubs that visit MOVE regularly.
There was a similar experience at Shepparton Art Museum with high visitor numbers across the long weekend.
SAM shop co-ordinator Lynne Parker said more than 200 people visited each day from Saturday to Monday, with Saturday being particularly busy.
“It was certainly bigger than a normal weekend,” Ms Parker said.
Ms Parker also said that many visitors were from outside the area, with the majority from Melbourne.
She also said many of the visitors she spoke to were staying around the Shepparton area for the weekend.
Tudor House Motor Inn manager Sunny Singh said Shepparton’s motels were booked out for the long weekend.
His motel alone was full from Friday to Sunday, and he had a lot of phone calls from people on Friday and Saturday who were still looking for rooms.
While he rang around other motels in the area to try and find these people somewhere to stay, he found everyone else was also fully booked.
Strayleaves Caravan Park owner Deborah McKenzie said that her caravan park got very busy late on Saturday afternoon and Saturday night with people arriving.
While the park was not heavily booked earlier last week, Ms McKenzie said the phones really started to ring on Thursday and Friday with most of the cabins booked out by the time the weekend started.
She also felt that a lot of people left things to the last minute and just got in the car on Saturday and left for a weekend away.
“It felt like people got up in the morning (on Saturday) and said let’s go away,” she said.