The Miss-Lou spends a lot of time and money promoting itself, and local officials say, it works.

The Natchez Convention and Visitor’s Bureau spends from $300,000 to $400,000 a year promoting itself and the surrounding area to tourists across the nation and around the world, Tourism Director Walter Tipton said.

Through ads in magazines, radio and television, word about Natchez gets around.

The Internet is a useful tool, too, Tipton said.

“We have a database of about 4,000 e-mail addresses,” he said. “We have a newsletter format we can send out. Each month, our themes rotate. Right now, we’re promoting Spring Pilgrimage heavily. When we move into April, we’ll be promoting the blues festival, too.”

Web sites get attention, as well, Tipton said. Over the past few months, a Natchez Trace promotion, giving away a prize vacation, gathered 1,600 new e-mail addresses, he said.

If they had more money to work with, Tipton said he would like to advertise more on billboards and increase the amount they advertise in the existing markets.

It’s not just e-mails and paid advertising that grab potential visitors’ attention. Press releases to media outlets help get the word out across the country, CVB Media Liason Sally Durkin said.

“We do a lot of publicity through the media, too,” Durkin said. “We sent out press releases on Pilgrimage to 137 newspapers from Kentucky to Kansas, in California and to the Atlantic coast and everyone in between. A lot of those travel editors will call back and ask for photographs.”

The CVB works closely with Natchez Pilgrimage Tours to promote the area, too, she said.

Miss-Lou promotions originate in Louisiana, too. Judith Bingham, director of the Delta Music Museum in Ferriday, said the state government helped promote the museum and the area. Friends of the Delta Museum, which supports the museum, also help promote the tourist draw through state connections and advertising.

“To me, the tourism in this area is one big circle,” Bingham said. “It’s not just Louisiana, and it’s not just Mississippi. I think it’s a joint effort.”

Bingham said she kept Pilgrimage brochures at the museum, and the Natchez visitors’ center hands out brochures on the museum.

“I really think the answer to our promotion is cooperation between everybody,” she said. “When we do that and we all push for each other, not just ourselves, we’re going to see even more of a boom than we have now.”