NATCHEZ — Natchez is set to be named a top travel destination for 2016 by “CBS This Morning” in a Saturday segment on the show.

Natchez Convention and Visitors Bureau Director Kevin Kirby said a “CBS This Morning” producer contacted his office with the news Natchez will be featured in a segment scheduled to air at 7 a.m. Saturday morning.

“We are just ecstatic about it,” Kirby said. “It’s a honor. Of all the places people could go, for Natchez to be a top destination through the eye of CBS is really exciting.”

CVB Public Relations Manager Jessica Cauthen said the CVB was asked by producers to provide photographs and interesting facts about Natchez for the segment.

Kirby and Tricentennial Director Jennifer Ogden Combs met CBS producers along with other national media professionals at a luncheon in New York organized Lou Hammond & Associates, the public relations firm with which the CVB has contracted to promote the Natchez Tricentennial.

“We must have made a good impression,” Kirby said. “I think that’s where the spark was set.”

Combs said she sees the exposure on CBS as just the beginning for Natchez on the doorstep of the city’s Tricentennial.

“This is such an exciting opportunity, and we are really on the national stage at this point,” she said.

Combs and Kirby met with representatives from broadcast news outlets as well as print publications including The Wall Street Journal, New York Post, USA Today and others.

Natchez was also mentioned in an article this week in the travel section of USAToday.com titled “Unusual holiday decorations around the USA.”

The Jeweled Christmas at The Towers, Ginger Hyland’s house, during which thousands of pieces of vintage costume jewelry are displayed was highlighted in the article.

“We knew before, but we have secured the fact that there’s a huge interest in anything and everything that is Natchez and a fascination with a city on the Mississippi River celebrating 300 years,” Kirby said.