NATCHEZ — The Tourism Marketing Advisory Committee needs full beds.

The 12-member committee charged with overseeing the $2 hotel room tax used to market Natchez has formulated a plan to advertise all Natchez has to offer, but now needs the money to fund that plan.

The $2 per room fee must be used for marketing purposes, according to the legislation enacting the fee in 2008.

Director of Tourism Connie Taunton, who leads the committee, said the $370,000 budget includes television, print and Internet advertising, along with promotional materials and related office expenses.

Taunton said approximately $300,000 of the budget will be funded through the room tax collections and the remainder will be funded from the Natchez Convention and Visitor Bureau budget.

Original estimates thought the hotel room fee would generate approximately $600,000 each year in new revenue. That estimate was changed to $480,000 shortly after the tax vote passed, but thus far revenues have failed to meet the $300,000 mark.

In the 2008-2009 fiscal year, $298,558.42 was collected and in fiscal year 2009-2010 $286,845.08 was collected.

Fiscal year 2010-2011 began Oct. 1.

“If we begin to see we are falling short, we will start making adjustments,” Taunton said.

Funds are split between marketing for meetings and conventions, leisure travel and African American heritage tourism.

This fiscal year’s budget calls for approximately $175,000 to be used for leisure marketing, $70,000 to be used for African American heritage marketing and $125,000 to be used to attract meetings and conventions.

Of those totals, a large portion of the funds will be used for advertising through purchased media.

“We research, research and research some more to figure out where to place these advertisements,” Tauton said.

The CVB also uses a traveler inquiry program that tracks where tourists come from and how they heard about Natchez, Taunton said.

From there, Tauton said, the CVB is able to better target its marketing efforts.

For leisure tourism marketing, Taunton said regional travel and lifestyle publications and cable television advertising will be used, along with targeted Internet advertising.

Natchez as a destination will likely be advertised in Southern Living, Birmingham Magazine, AAA Southern Traveler, AAA Texas Journey, At Home Tennessee, AAA Tour Book and other publications.

“You have to do AAA Tour Book,” Taunton said. “That is like the Bible for tourism.”

The marketing plan also calls for web-based advertising on Google, Facebook, Trip Advisor and Visit South.

For African American heritage tourism, advertisements are planned for Black Meetings and Tourism print publication, TripInfo and the AAA Tour Book.

“We are also looking at doing some television advertising with BET in the Jackson and Tupelo areas,” Taunton said.

For meetings and conventions, the advertising is targeted at professional publications including the Louisiana Society of Association Executives and Mississippi Society of Association Executives publications.

Taunton said while much research goes into formulating the media purchases each year, nothing is set in stone.

“We are tied to very little of this right now,” Taunton said. “This is a plan. Something will happen halfway through and we’ll have to start adjusting and moving things around.”

Many times, Taunton said, the CVB is able to use cooperative agreements with either state associations or local properties and attractions to share the costs of advertisements.

“This is not an easy process,” she said. “There is a lot of wheeling and dealing that goes into making this plan and there is still some of that going on.”