EARLY morning sprints to the amenities block, warm sunburn cream slopped on sandy skin, and sausages barbecued beyond recognition.

Caravan parks have their fair share of "unique experiences", but it seems the classic Australian summer holiday destination is attracting numbers not seen since the golden days of the 1930s.

"House full" signs have gone up on caravan parks, camping grounds and other low-cost accommodation up and down the NSW coast as local tourism experiences a boom.

The South Coast has been particularly popular, with owners and managers saying they are booked solid until the end of the month, but are still receiving scores of phone calls each day.

"We're definitely getting more calls than last year. People are coming down from Sydney and Canberra, even just an hour away," the reservations manager of Seven Mile Beach Holiday Park at Gerroa, Gail Phillips, said.

"We have a waiting list each year so the people who couldn't get in the previous year are at the front of the queue for the following, and I can tell you next year's list is getting pretty long."

Almost universal among the tourism operators contacted by the Herald was the view that the caravan park boom is the result of holidaymakers tightening their belts because of the rising costs of living and the uncertain economic outlook.

Operators said that although caravans and cabins were in short supply, hotels at the upper end of the market were struggling to fill many of their rooms.

"Everything is so expensive - why would you pay for a fancy hotel room?" said Janet Osman, whose family has an onsite van at Seven Mile Beach.

"It's warm during the day, it's cool at night - this is God's country."

The NSW Tourism Minister, Jodi McKay, said the Government would do everything it could to stimulate tourism in the state in light of Tourism Australia's prediction that international travel to Australia would drop because of the global financial crisis.

For the operators of the Ettalong Beach Holiday Village, the timing of the boom could not have been better.

"We only took over in July and we're booked solid until the end of January," the manager of the park, Melissa Cusworth, said.

"We weren't expecting it to be like this. I've been turning people away for two weeks - there seem to be a lot of people making last-minute plans.

"I don't know what it is; maybe they decided against their big, expensive holiday or something. I just hope it keeps going."