Travellers will spread throughout the region despite the South Coast's exclusion from the federal government's $1.2 billion tourism plan.

On Stayz, Easter holiday rental demand for the South Coast region shot up 105 per cent and on Airbnb, searches for Nowra and surrounds increased by 173 per cent compared to Easter 2019 (pre pandemic), according to internal data.

Airbnb's country manager for Australia and New Zealand, Susan Wheeldon, said it had been incredibly heartening to see Australians contributing to their community's economic recovery.

"And with many families currently making their Easter plans, there's also a real opportunity for people to list their own home on Airbnb and potentially even offset the cost of their own holiday," she said.

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Shoalhaven ranked eighth in Tripadvisor's Emerging Destinations list which ranks the top 25 under-the-radar destinations throughout the world.

Huskisson scraped into 10th place in Booking.com's February 2021 Top 10 Trending Domestic Destinations list. This means Huskisson was within the top 100 most searched places during February 2021 and went up more than 10 ranks compared to the list from the same period in 2020.

Gerringong Coast and Country holiday rentals are booked out over Easter with only a little bit of availability for the entire school holiday period according to holiday property manager, Rachel Mackenzie.

"It's similar to what we saw at Christmas where everything was fully booked. COVID is obviously stopping international travel and affecting interstate travel but within NSW, everyone still wants to see what's in their own backyard," she said.

She said bookings over Easter were always close to being fully booked out "but it has never been at 100 per cent occupancy".

"We're also finding that people are going to places like Gerroa and Shoalhaven Heads where they used to stick to bigger centres like Gerringong and Kiama. Obviously places like Shoalhaven Heads are not as well known," she said.

Shoalhaven City Council tourism manager Coralie Bell said demand had probably been even higher this year due to fewer holiday destination options for NSW and ACT travellers with many holidaymakers booking far in advance.

She said almost every weekend outside of school holidays was also booked heavily.

"The Shoalhaven is only two hours from Sydney and Canberra. Being within driving distance, and with interstate and international travel confidence down, the Shoalhaven has benefited greatly from a huge increase in road trip traffic exiting the cities," she said.

"Intrastate travel confidence within regional NSW has been high since the locked ceased in June 2020, bringing a new demographic of travellers to the Shoalhaven that may have otherwise been overseas or interstate, many of which had substantial budget for their visit."

She said new visitors to the shoalhaven.com website have grown 140 per cent year on year and hoped the region would retain those tourists in future years.

Ms Bell urged travellers to book accommodation and restaurants early and spread out and explore all, not just a few, of the 100 beaches that the region has to offer.