"Both of those groups have a strong mantra about spending up in these towns," said Anthony Osborne, Managing Director of the Destination Agency in Pambula.

With wonderful weather towards the end of last week and over the weekend when both groups arrived to town, Mr Osborne said it was a great weekend for tourism around the Valley.

"Those 700 or so people could come back in the future on self-drive holidays and can contribute to hundreds or even thousands of more people coming to the area. Word of mouth which really drives regional tourism."

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Mr Osborne said that the region has been seeing strong weekend travel rates and that is a good indication of what is likely to continue throughout the remainder of the year if COVID cases remain low.

"There's still uncertainty about booking big holidays a long way out, and so people are inclined to go out over the weekend and are more confident to do these shorter stays."

He said that while everything remains month to month, international borders closures continue to appear to be a positive thing for regional Australia.

"I think that we've definitely seen increases in certain areas, some improvements on what would be a normal year, but that always needs to be considered against how deeply some businesses were impacted by bushfires and then COVID in this area."

The mild autumn and winter weather with blue skies will bring regional travellers from places like Gippsland, North-Eastern Victoria, the Murray and the Riverina said Mr Osborne.

When asked about the travel bubble between New Zealand and Australia, Mr Osborne said travellers from NZ tend to stick to warmer destinations up north.

"People from NZ will be flocking to those traditional holiday hubs up north for warm holidays, but hopefully we will get some overflow from that."

"People from NZ will be flocking to those traditional holiday hubs up north for warm holidays but hopefully we will get some overflow from that."

While some travellers might be interested in supporting tourism in areas that were greatly affected by the bushfires in 2019-20, Mr Osbourne said most people have been so greatly affected by the pandemic across the globe that many travellers are simply looking for a break.

"People are travelling for themselves at the moment and tend to be doing a bit of self care and getting away, but certainly when they get here and meet locals and they realise it's been greatly affected and learning about what happened here, they will have empathy, but there's just so many reasons why people travel."