Wednesday's solar eclipse has travellers eyeing out hotel and accommodation bookings in Cairns, according to new data.

Transpiring on 14 November this year, the event referred to as a total eclipse, will completely obscure the light of the sun and occurs somewhere on earth every 18 months but will not return to that location for another 360 to 410 years.

Giving Aussies an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to witness it on their home turf, online searches for Cairns picked up by 25 percent for around the 14 November eclipse, according to HotelsCombined.com figures, while searches more than doubled the seasonal average for check-ins two days before the event.

The online booking site’s insights and analytics expert Paul Hayden added that other regions within the path of the eclipse, including Port Douglas were being eyed, gaining “unusually high hotel interest for a weekday period”.

“The eclipse is obviously an event that’s generating lots of interest in the area and that will likely prove quite lucrative for the local tourism community,” he explained.

Meanwhile hotel prices picked up by 11 percent during the week of the eclipse, with an average nightly rate of $152.22 compared to the average rate of $136.91 the week before.