Kudos to the Natchez-Adams Chamber of Commerce’s Tourism Council, which has made plans to study how the city markets itself to tourists &045;&045; and recommend possible changes.

With tourism such a large industry in our community, we would all be wise to pay attention to the results of the study, which would be conducted by New Orleans tourism consultant Stu Barish.

That’s because the study will focus not only on how our public efforts are working but on how our private efforts affect tourism as well.

No one necessarily wants to tell a private business owner what to do, but there are some basic steps we can take as a community to be more tourist-friendly, whether it’s kindly giving directions to lost out-of-towners or having stores stay open later or on weekends to accommodate visitors.

Candidates for mayor in Natchez have all said they would cooperate with a study, and by the time it is complete someone will have won the election and will need to evaluate what the city itself can do to boost our tourism efforts.

We encourage the city’s elected officials and the community’s business leaders &045;&045; particularly those in the tourism industry &045;&045; to pay attention to what Barish finds and recommends.

No one is suggesting that tourism be the only industry for Natchez, but it is one of our most important and certainly at the moment one of our most successful. We need to ensure we are doing all we can to keep it that way.