Could there be too many cooks in the tourism kitchen? After years of sluggish business and leisure travel, the tourism industry and mayor’s office have decided to give the Convention & Visitors Bureau (CVB) its own self-governing board. Meanwhile, the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce, which will now have a more distant relationship with the CVB, will be announcing—hold your breath—nine new strategic goals this week. According to chamber president Mike Neal, four of those goals will include marketing and selling Nashville to tourists and conventioneers. Then there’s the new tourism position Mayor Bill Purcell created. According to Deputy Mayor Bill Phillips, that person’s job will be to “wake up every day and think about tourism in Nashville.”

Which is sort of Butch Spyridon’s job, the executive vice president of the CVB, except that he’ll now report not to the mayor or the chamber but to his new board. All of this is to say nothing of the role of Metro Convention and Tourism Commission, which will continue to exist, at least for another year, even though the new CVB board will usurp most of its responsibilities.

Just exactly how the creation of all these strategic goals, boards and positions will convince a family of four from southern Indiana to vacation in Nashville isn’t entirely clear. In interviews with the Scene, an array of decision-makers in the tourism, government and management circles used empty bureaucratic language to explain their positions. These changes are, for example, “a win-win for the industry, community, CVB and the chamber.” Then, of course, there’s the comment that everybody is now on the “right road moving forward.” The words “strategic” and “accountability” are particular favorites among this crowd. One public official explains that the new setup will “establish a better recording mechanism.”

There’s also plenty of confusion about the food chain in the new arrangement. The deputy mayor says that Spyridon will still report to the chamber president. “Mike Neal is ultimately responsible for all the chamber’s operations, and the CVB is one of those,” Phillips says. But Ralph Schulz, the president of the Adventure Science Center, who chaired the tourism working group that recommended a board for the CVB, says Spyridon will be reporting to the CVB’s new board of directors. That’s what Spyridon understands too. Meanwhile, Neal, says that he’s “excited about the opportunities for collaboration.” Of course, those opportunities have always been there, and it’s not clear how giving the CVB its own board will create more of them.

But if the troops are scattered, the man who has been more or less leading them for over a decade, Spyridon himself, seems to understand better than anyone the CVB’s new role. “The first advantage is the ability for us to independently advocate for the hospitality industry,” he says. “In the past, as a chamber affiliate, the message often got muddled.”

Last year, when Louisville businessman Ed Hart hoped to bring an amusement park to Nashville, the chamber didn’t exactly break a sweat backing the idea, which rested on the use of municipal bonds. If the CVB had had its own board and some degree of autonomy from the chamber, it might have lobbied for it. “Nobody would have wanted the mayor to write a blank check, but was there an effort from the business community to see if something could be done?” Spyridon wondered rhetorically last summer, with a degree of frustration.

Now the CVB can be more proactive for its constituents. It also might be able to be more entrepreneurial. Currently, the CVB’s $8 million budget is generated from hotel and motel taxes. Under the new arrangement, the CVB and its board will operate as a 501(c)(6), which, unlike a Metro agency, can solicit private dollars. That’s a positive development, given that many believe the city could and should spend more money promoting tourism.

“When you compare what Nashville spends to what Pigeon Forge spends, the two don’t even equate,” says Keith Hensley, the director of sales and marketing for the Nashville Marriott and president of the Greater Nashville Hotel and Lodging Association.

Also, the new CVB board probably will be more diverse than the tourism commission, and more focused on luring visitors than the often stodgy chamber board members, who are interested not so much in tourism as they are in pro-business issues inside the city. According to a proposal in the working group’s report, the new board will include about 16 members, from large and small hotels, restaurants, attractions and the music industry.

Of course, a new board can only do so much. There are serious rifts in the industry, most noticeably between those who want to attract more families to Nashville and those who’d prefer high-end business travel. Gaylord CEO Colin Reed told the Scene in February that Nashville has fallen short in capturing the “country lifestyle consumer,” a demographic he estimates is 70 million strong. At-large Metro Council member Leo Waters more or less agrees. He notes that the average middle-class family of four, once drawn to Nashville by the Opryland theme park, bus tours, wax museums and, well, country music, is now choosing other destinations.

Then there’s the issue of a new convention center to attract more business travel, which both the CVB and the Greater Nashville Hotel and Lodging Association support. The idea that Reed has advanced, and that may be gaining some believers, is that the CVB and the hoteliers aren’t as interested in the “country lifestyle consumer.”

“I hear that all the time, but the fact is that we spend better than 50 percent of our budget on tourism,” says Spyridon, who notes that hotel and motel tax collections are up because of the convention business even while tourism is down. “Conventions have been more fruitful and lucrative over the last few years, so people tend to think that’s all we’re doing. ”

The CVB’s new board could reconcile those two goals, improving both leisure and business travel, but some wonder whether it might just shuffle a lot of paper. “It sounds to me like it will create another level of bureaucracy,” Waters says. “This is a structural change, and a structural change in and of itself won’t improve tourism in Nashville. The key is to make sure that everybody here is involved in selling Nashville 365 days a year. And if this structural change can help motivate that, then it will be a positive.”

Mike Kelly, who has served on the Metro Convention and Tourism Commission for over six years, says that the industry has changed dramatically over the years, and the new organization might be able to reflect that. “Ten years ago, the hospitality industry was directed by the folks at Opryland.... Now maybe this is an opportunity for a lot of people to come to the table and make things happen.”