Motels fully booked on Sunday ahead of Vic-NSW border opening

Seven accommodation providers in Wodonga have no rooms available on Sunday.

Motel 24, Warrina Motor Inn and Quest Wodonga were booked out soon after NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian announced the 12.01am, November 23 date for the reopening.

Econo Lodge Border Gateway Wodonga general manager Duncan McLaren said his rooms on Moorefield Park Drive were booked within seven hours on November 4.

"Half of our reservations are from NSW, which is fantastic for our area," he said.

"We get a lot of tourists from both sides of the border with people visiting family, and many people have booked this weekend so they can see family."

Stories of grandparents seeing newborn babies for the first time have been shared with Blazing Stump, which has a waiting list for November 22.

Sunday will be the first booked-out night at Murray Valley Motel since the pandemic began in Victoria, when Chryslers on the Murray took place in March.

Trystan Maciulis, of Motel Wellington on High Street, said any bookings that had been cancelled since the announcement were quickly being filled.

"A lot of it is people that are wanting to be as close to the border as possible, to be able to cross at the earliest opportunity," he said.

"We went from having two rooms booked, to them all being booked.

"There's room on the Saturday and it's rare to be booked out on the Sunday night, the only time that usually happens is on a long weekend.

"Hopefully they spend some money in Wodonga and go out for dinner."

Stagecoach Motor Inn also has Sunday completely booked out, but availability on Friday and Saturday, with four enquiries in a row on Wednesday.

Mr McLaren hoped people staying in Wodonga for the border reopening would come back.

Econo Lodge, which was opened as Border Gateway Motel in 1989, was taken over by Mr McLaren in September and refreshed under the Choice Hotels brand.

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"Those initial few months of restrictions were quite crippling ... it's not what we expected in the first 12 months of operation," he said.

"We acknowledge there's a lot of motels that struggled through that.

"Christmas is looking pretty positive; it's picking up quite nicely.

"It's all about reopening up to tourism. Having the region open up is really important."

As the Victorian-NSW border reopening nears, the Victorian government has announced it will close its border to South Australia as that state works to contain a new cluster.

A hard border will be in place from tonight, until a permit is established for use from Saturday.

Asked if the Victorian border would shut in the future to NSW, every time there is an outbreak there, Premier Daniel Andrews said "No".

"That's very different, what they're going through [in South Australia]," he said.

"I've been pretty supportive of having the nation united by Christmas, and we'll play our part in doing that."

There were no new cases of COVID-19 reported in Victoria on Thursday, but fragments were detected for the first time in weeks.

Fragments of the virus that causes coronavirus were detected in untreated wastewater taken from Portland and from Benalla wastewater treatment plants on Tuesday, the 17^th of November.

Health officials are working to determine if there is an active case in the area or not, with fragments found elsewhere not resulting in a positive case being found.