Warrnambool City's director of city growth Andrew Paton said council's holidays parks had already seen a return of regional Victorian holidaymakers as bookings continued into the summer.

"Last weekend our holiday parks had about 120 bookings across selected sites to ensure compliance with social distancing," he said.

"While this is around half of what we have booked historically for this time of the year it is an encouraging signal and we are also seeing a steady level of enquiry from across the state, including metropolitan areas for bookings over coming weeks through to the back end of November."

Mr Paton said forward bookings in the coming weeks were down compared to the Melbourne Cup weekend, but holiday parks wouldn't be operating at full capacity inline with COVID Safe practices.

He confirmed more information on the availability of summer sites and a fair system of allocation would be announced in coming weeks.

Elsewhere across the region there's been mixed reports about the return of tourists.

Langley's Port Fairy Booking Service has a four-page waitlist for the Christmas and New Year period and property manager Kristy Pruin said it had been as busy as ever.

"We've got plenty of interest from Melburnians and a lot have them have missed out," she said. "We are completely back-to-back with our 90 properties over the summer period.

"The last couple of weeks have been busy and I have more housekeepers on than ever before. I'm seeing longer bookings; normally this time of year is a two-night stay over weekends however it's unpredictable what's happening."

Best Western Great Ocean Road Motor Inn owner Liz McKenzie said Port Campbell had been a hive of activity over the past couple of weeks, but many tourists were day-trippers.

"The town is pretty heavily booked for the next few weeks with workers," she said. "But beyond that, there's not much, just bits here and there. We've had lots of travellers to town and it was busy on cup day, but still a lot quieter than last year. The workers who are staying are long-term which is great."

Warrnambool Holiday Park and Motel owner Steve Moore said his accommodation was as quiet as it's ever been.

"Melbourne is still in shutdown and it seems regions aren't coming here either," he said.

"At the same time, there's been no marketing here and that's half the problem. We do our own marketing through social media but at the end of the day the phones aren't ringing. We need the tourists to come, they're the ones who put the money in the economy."

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