Visit Florida has celebrated completion of a four-month-long beach walk that gathered panoramic, step-by-step footage of Florida’s beaches, to be published by Google Maps in spring 2014.
Two-person trekker teams sharing a backpack equipped with a Google StreetView camera walked Florida’s 825 miles of beaches, a journey of nearly two million steps along the shorelines of pristine parks and chic resorts.
Visit Florida officials and Florida tourism industry leaders celebrated as walkers completed the last mile of the journey on Wednesday morning in Miami Beach’s South Pointe Park.
As part of a partnership between Visit Florida and Google Maps, the two trekker teams collected a half-million panographic scenes, comprised of 7.5 million images representing a virtual tour of Florida’s beaches. The final product will let consumers around the world preview Florida’s beautiful and diverse beaches via the world’s largest search engine.
The walk started in July 2013 in Perdido Key, in northwest Florida, and covered the Gulf and Atlantic beaches of the entire state.