A search committee tasked with finding Natchez’s new tourism leader has an immensely important task ahead of it.

Since the former Natchez Convention and Visitors Bureau director retired last month, the CVB is poised to pause, consider what it needs in a leader and then go out and find a person who possesses those qualities.

The City of Natchez appointed a 13-member committee last week that will recruit the new director.

We encourage the group to consider recruiting someone from outside the area.

Doing so may help eliminate the years and years of bad blood that has bubbled up between official city tourism leaders and the owners and managers of the groups they effectively represent — restaurant and shop owners, for instance.

Leading the CVB is in some ways a thankless task and one in which judging success can be difficult in the short term.

Over time, however the judge of a good CVB director may be measured by both tourism tax receipt totals, the number of heads on bed in hotels and B&Bs, but also in the feeling of cohesiveness between the various tourism properties.

For Natchez’s tourism efforts to truly succeed over time, all hands must be pulling in the same direction. We need a plan and then a good director to help the community follow that plan.

If that can be accomplished, the community as a whole and the tourists who come to Natchez will all be winners.