Polk pushes tourism with new info centers. (Polk County, Florida)

Polk County, whose roads are filled with tourists headed to Tampa or Orlando, is trying to capture some of that traffic for itself.

The county recently started touting its virtues from a portable information kiosk at the newly refurbished Lakeland Center.

The mobile booth, which is operated by the Central Florida Convention and Visitors Bureau, is the first of several information centers planned in the county.

In the past few years, Polk County has become more aggressive in marketing it, self as an eco-tourism destination, as a way of competing with larger, higher-profile destinations in Florida.

Now, with the creation of its own information centers, …