Submitted Photo A chance meeting of Hostfest royalty took place at this year's festival between 1980 Miss Norsk Hostfest Mary Simonson McKeon and 2022 title winner Nevaeh Christianson of Bottineau. Photo submitted by Tim Johnson.

More than 30,000 visitors attended this year’s Norsk Hostfest, according to the event’s new organizers, who were pleased with that turnout.

“Attendance was good. It was right around what we were expecting. So we’re pretty happy with that,” said Alexis Meyer, Norsk Hostfest coordinator with EPIC Events.

EPIC Events is inviting Norsk Hostfest visitors to share their thoughts and suggestions in a survey that is being made available at least through Oct. 24 on the Norsk Hostfest website and social media pages. People who had provided emails also may have received emailed surveys.

Early feedback from entertainers and vendors has been positive, Meyer said.

“We had great feedback from our vendors, which we were very, very happy about. There was the initial hesitation from some of them to come back just because they didn’t know what it was going to look like and what the state of the world was going to hold for them,” Meyer said. In the end, all the vendors were happy they came, she said.

“I was able to talk to a handful that said they’d absolutely be back next year and that their foot traffic was amazing,” she said.

Early feedback also indicated that people enjoyed the entertainment and would like to see Daniel O’Donnell and the Texas Tenors return.

“We tried our best to give a variety while making the festival a little smaller this year so that we’d have room to grow,” Meyer said of the entertainment. “And then especially the Great Hall shows, with the afternoon shows being geared towards a little bit different demographic than the evening shows, also went over really well. We really wanted to draw in a newer demographic for the evening shows and it was very well received from the demographic that we were expecting.”

Meyer said the new strategy with the evening shows drew people who hadn’t been to Hostfest previously and who stayed well after the shows to take in the night activities.

The nightly dances for both older and younger crowds had some hiccups in getting people to the right locations, but overall, the dances went over well, Meyer said. Having successfully coordinated with Minot State University this year, Hostfest hopes to bring in even more students from the university’s dance classes next year to provide partners at the nightly events.

EPIC identified various ways to make the festival better as well, Meyer said.

“This was really a learning experience for all of us. There were 43 years of knowledge that we came in and had a year to kind of learn. We’re basically starting fresh. So after this year, we’ve got pages and pages of notes of things that we would like to change,” she said.

Some are small changes, such as avoiding overlapping of shows. Others are bigger changes, such as restoring the shuttle service.

Meyer said Hostfest struggled to find buses and drivers this year to operate the traditional shuttle service between the parking lot and venue. Consequently, the festival opted for golf cart transportation to try to make up for the lack of buses, but it didn’t work as well as hoped, she said.

“We are working on a plan for next year already to solve that issue, and we definitely want our attendees to know that issue is in the back of our minds and we’re working to solve that for the future,” she said.

She added it was unfortunate that restrictions at the Canadian border didn’t lift until Oct. 1, noting that lingering pandemic concerns hurt both Canadian and bus tour traffic this year. As those concerns ease, Hostfest visitation has potential to grow in future years, she said.

“One thing that we will look to expand in the future is our family area, our  kids area, as well as some of our food areas too. We definitely are looking for more food vendors in the future that can have that authentic Scandinavian food. And then our Family Zone went over really well,” Meyer said.