Hotels, guest-houses and boarding houses

Hotels and guest-houses were the major forms of nineteenth century holiday accommodation. Guest-houses and boarding houses were businesses that required little further investment by anyone with spare rooms in their houses and that also capitalised on domestic housekeeping skills. In an era when women faced difficulties getting finance from banks, many guest-house proprietors and boarding house proprietors were women. From the early colonial days, women also ran hotels both on their own and in partnership with their husbands.

In the nineteenth century, hotels usually offered one of the largest meeting venues in a coastal community and often hosted public meetings about ocean baths.

In the nineteenth and early twentieth century, hotels in Wollongong and Kiama proudly advertised their proximity to the ocean baths. In the 1930s, ocean baths at Bermagui's Horseshoe Bay featured in advertisements for the Horseshoe Bay Hotel.

In 1894, the number of guests at the local hotel was used as a key measure of the success of Shellharbour's newly constructed ocean baths in bringing tourists to the town. Likewise in Kiama in the 1920s, the success of the town's new Continental Baths was measured by the increased number of guests at the town's hotels and guest-houses.

Publicans occasionally supported working bees at the ocean baths by donating a much appreciated keg of beer to the volunteer workers.

In the late-twentieth century, some guest-houses acquired a new identities as B&Bs (Bed and Breakfast establishments).

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