Canberrans have taken advantage of the public holiday on Thursday to turn it into a long weekend. Just taking the Friday as holiday meant a four-day break.
"It was a lot busier than our regular Thursdays," according to Josh Griggs, supervisor at the Braidwood Bakery, a regular pit-stop on the road to the coast (and so a good barometer of holiday movement).
The bakery stayed open on the official day off but plenty of eateries didn't, according to Olivier Kapetanakos, president of the Jindabyne Chamber of Trade.
This meant that the spike in tourist numbers meant many visitors to the snow or the sea were underserved, he felt.
"We had tourists moving around," he said. "There were people doing day trips, people who had travelled down from Canberra but cafes were shut."
He runs an accommodation business and he said there was an increase in bookings for it.
But, on the other hand, places to serve the visitors hadn't opened "out of respect for the Queen" but also, in his view, because the public holiday was "sprung at short notice".
He knew of tradies who had decided to work on the Thursday and then take Friday off to get a three-day weekend because four days off would mean losing too much money.
Hoteliers in Batemans Bay didn't notice a sudden spike in bookings - but they have noticed a longer-term change in habits.
"It's less seasonal than it was," David Maclachlan, president of the Batemans Bay Business and Tourism Chamber, said. "Sometimes weekdays are busier than weekends."
The days when families headed to the coast for weeks have gone for many of them, he said. "January is always good but that notion that everybody goes on holiday until Australia day - no," he said.
He puts some of the blame on the entertainment habits of children and teenagers. "There's clearly a cultural shift. It's a profound change to do with the internet," he said.
He said that he had known families who had booked and paid for accommodation - but who then left early because children were glued to screens and not interested in the conventional holiday. "The kids are entertained online so it doesn't matter where they are," he said.
The pattern now is much more to head to the coast at short notice, and only for a few days. David Maclachlan of Batemans Bay business chamber says "dynamic pricing" where prices change by the hour means people don't plan so far ahead as they used to.
"You might change your prices three times a day," he said.
Travel over a wider region does seem to have increased in the past few days. Flight websites had increased interest when the public holiday was suddenly announced, Traveller magazine said under the headline, "Bookings surge for Queen's memorial long weekend".
"The demand has pushed already-increased airfares and hotel rates higher. Bookings in places like Byron Bay and Far North Queensland have blown out," Haydn Long of Flight Centre was quoted as saying.
