The Impact of Day Trips to Daytona Beach

Abstract

Coastal areas and other tourist destinations are popular with ‘day trippers’, who have a substantial effect on local tourism economies and may help to stabilize seasonal demand fluctuations. However, day trippers can also accelerate resource degradation, burden municipalities with higher policing and maintenance costs, and create image problems. Daytona Beach is a destination for which day tripper visitation generates both positive and negative effects which local policy makers need to assess. Analyses of what influences beach area selection, frequency of visitation and party size, and annual per capita spending are used to shed light on public policy issues such as restricting beach driving and an over-dependence on events-based tourism.