Last week’s meeting of Natchez area tourism leaders was encouraging. Seeing the long-splintered group working together is truly exciting, if they can keep it going.

As we’ve seen recently with the push for regionalism and the reworking of the Natchez-Adams economic development entity, success starts with communication.

Although few tangibles may seem to have come from the summit, if all the people at the table will stay at the table and continue talking, great things can happen.

For years, Natchez tourism has suffered from simply having too many small groups pulling in different directions.

We have one group leading the city’s CVB. Another private group manages the convention center. A group of tourism business leaders from the chamber work to explain tourism needs from a business perspective. Historic homeowners operate Natchez Pilgrimage Tours. And, unfortunately, many other people operate tourism-related businesses but don’t seem to fall anywhere in that group and are just left to complain about everything.

Just explaining what each group does can be exhausting, let alone understanding and gauging how successful each is.

As roundtable facilitator Phil Hardwick said, “You’re perfectly structured for the results you are getting.”

While on the surface, that may almost read as if it’s a great thing, especially with his use of the work “perfect,” it isn’t.

What he’s saying, we think, is: Your splintered, non-cohesive system is giving you, splintered, non-cohesive results.

Natchez can change that and we’re encouraged to see the tourism leaders standing up and saying, “We can do better.”

We can, and we should.