Utilizing Big Data from Online Reviews to Understand Local Tourist Travel

In a popular tourist destination, tourists’ travel places a significant burden on the highway traffic. Florida has abundant and diverse recreation and tourism resources including beaches, natural preserves, theme parks, and historic towns and settlements that attract cir. 100 million tourists annually. While multiple studies researched the inbound and outbound tourism, local in-state tourism is poorly understood and data is largely missing. This study presents preliminary findings on the local Florida tourism aiming to understand the in-state travel of Florida residents. The emphasis of the study is on the pattern of the number of long-distance trips and travel distances by residents of 68 Florida counties. Additionally, we investigate how the socio-demographic and economic factors affect Floridians’ travel distance and the spatial variations of travel distance at the county level