(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to "Prairie Pulse."

Coming up a little bit later in the show, we'll learn a little bit about the Concordia Language Villages.

But first, joining me now is the CEO of the Bismarck-Mandan Convention and Visitors Bureau, Sheri Grossman.

Sheri, thanks for joining us today.

- Thanks for inviting me, happy to be here.

- Well, we're excited to learn about Bismarck-Mandan Convention and Visitors Bureau, but before we do that, tell the folks a little bit about yourself and your background, maybe where you're originally from.

- Sure, I'd be happy to.

I've been in North Dakota my entire life, so it's a joy to continue selling North Dakota, but I'm from Linton, North Dakota, small town not too far from here.

So I've been in Bismarck most of my life, other than we were in Grand Forks for a while, most of my adult life.

And I've been with the Bureau since 1997, so just about 29 years, not always in this role, but when I was in Grand Forks, I worked for the Energy Environmental Research Center, and I planned meetings for them.

So it kind of got my interest in this world, so I was happy to kind of transfer into a position like this.

- Okay, so a lot of people will know, but a lot of people won't understand, what is the Bismarck-Mandan Convention and Visitors Bureau?

- You're right, a lot of people don't.

So our mission is to promote quality visitor experiences resulting in community, economic growth, and quality of place.

So, you know, we do that, we have different groups that we work with.

We work, a lot of our focus is meetings and events, sporting events, all kinds of meetings.

And then we also work with the leisure traveler, both international and domestically as well.

We also have a gift shop in our area in our visitor center, where we kind of have a lot of nice North Dakota products, some unique things that you can't find there.

So basically, what we do is we work to entice visitors of all kinds to meet in our community.

- Well, you say you've been there 29 years, but you've been the CEO for... - The last 11.

- For 11 years.

So with all that time there, you know, what kind of changes have you seen take place?

- You know, I think technology, well, I'm sure that's with everyone, but it's changed so much.

I mean, when I started, we were sending out flyers and postcards, and so much of our marketing was print.

And we still do a little bit of print.

We do a lovely visitor's guide and some other things, But we have changed the digital world for pretty much all aspects of our marketing and advertising.

Now, we can track visitors, we can learn more what they're interested in doing.

We have the capabilities.

Even when we have people here, we know where they come from, what income they're from.

If they're at the convention center, we know where they were, first spot they were before and the first spot they went after.

So it really helps us realize who's interested in coming here and helps us focus on marketing in those areas.

- Mm-hmm.

So where are you located and how many staff do you have?

- We're at 1600 Burnt Boat Drive and we have about 10 staff in the office, 10 full-time staff.

- Okay.

So as we talk about it, I mean, one of the questions I have, does your bureau actually work with North Dakota Tourism and Sara Otte Coleman there?

- We do, we work with them for a variety of things.

We do some co-op marketing with them.

One of the biggest areas that RCV works with them is on the international market.

And we partner with them.

There's a group that we work with out of Wyoming called Rocky Mountain International, and they're a partner of it, so we can be a partner under tourism.

There's a lot of interest in international people.

They're gonna go to Disney, and they're gonna go to Florida, and New York, and California first, and we're probably like their third or fourth trip when they come here.

So we know they're not just going to come to Bismarck, we kind of market our region because they get a nice amount of vacation.

So we work with them largely on promoting that.

- Do you know how many visitors bureaus there are in North Dakota?

- I don't know how many there are, but I do know that we are the oldest CVB in the state.

We were the first one in 1980.

- Okay, well, since the bureau is a nonprofit organization, how do you fund the operation?

- Our main funding source is we get 75% of the 2% lodging tax in Bismarck.

We also get a portion of the Mandan lodging tax.

We are a membership CVB, and then we have a nice gift shop.

We have a variety of North Dakota products, we get income from that.

And then we also do charitable gaming.

We have five gaming sites in Bismarck.

- And of course, when you mentioned your staff, that was not any gaming staff, you mentioned?

- Correct?

That was our full-time in-office, that are in the, but we have about 30 part-time dealers and cashiers throughout the community.

- Sure.

What's the economic impact that the Bureau has on Bismarck-Mandan area?

- That's a good question.

I don't have the overall impact, but I can just give you a little bit of a hint on what meetings, conventions, and events.

I don't have our 2025 stats yet, but in 2024, we worked with over 300 multi-day meetings and events that brought in 275,000 attendees, and those attendees, while they were here, spent about 29.6 million.

Now that's just the ones we worked with.

You know, there's some smaller ones that we probably wouldn't have worked with, and that's direct expenditures.

That's not times the dollars roll around in the community, so that's just the meeting and event side of it.

- Yeah, so does the Bureau work mainly, it just promotes Bismarck and Mandan, correct?

- Correct.

- Why not just focus on one city?

- You know, it's been that way from the beginning, and we look at ourselves as a community.

They both have great offerings.

Mandan has, they do a lot of great events, and of course, Fort Abraham Lincoln, Fort Lincoln State Park is in Mandan, and they do spectacular events throughout the year, and Bismarck has many amenities.

So we enjoy selling both communities.

- You talked about members.

How many members does the Bureau have and what does it take to be a member?

- Exactly, so membership is based on hotels.

You know, we are largely with hotels.

You can go to their bread and butter business.

So their membership is at a certain rate.

Restaurants, I'll be based on seats in it.

But like just the average business that wants to be a part, it's only $200.

We don't really charge a whole lot to be a member of the CVB.

We just really, we always promote our members first.

So whether it's someone, we get a referral for someone that comes in, or we always go to our members first.

- Well, so what does membership mean for the Bureau, and in turn, what does it mean to be a member of the Bureau?

You kind of answered a little bit of it there.

- You know, and I think the really important thing is, I think sometimes people think, "Oh, this doesn't really affect me.

"What they do doesn't affect me."

And it really does affect everybody because visitors spend money in our community, they generate sales tax, which then the local governments can use to buy down property tax, infrastructure, fix streets.

So what we do really does benefit everybody in town.

And I had a colleague in another state, he had said he had this pothole theory.

He was going to figure out how many visitors it took to fix a pothole.

And he said, "Then I think if people had realized the wonderful impact visitors have on our community."

- Well, obviously you have an impact, but how's the Bureau, maybe, I don't know if it's transformed or the tourism industry in the area, or has it just been ever-changing?

You've been there 29 years, so you've seen a lot of things change, but what impacts and what changes have you, from a transformation part of it, the tourism part of it?

- You know, and I think when impact... When I started, we were always conventions and meetings, conventions and meetings, because that's the big things.

When you see people in town, kind of that's what everyone knows.

And in more recent years, we've also started focusing a lot on the leisure traveler, 'cause our community really does have a lot to offer, whether they're traveling in state or coming from another state.

So I think that's one thing that's really transitioned a lot, is that we're working more with the leisure traveler as well, because then you're able to sell all parts of the community.

You know, they just get to experience different restaurants.

Visitors want a lot what the local people want.

They want good, clean community, nice parks to be in, nice places to eat, so.

- You talked about travelers.

Do you track the percentage of leisure travelers versus the meetings and things that you do, business travelers?

- Traditionally, we really haven't been tracking and leisure travels.

North Dakota Tourism does that.

So we do get a lot of our numbers from them on that.

They track by county.

So we generally have getting more on that.

Now we're able, because of our marketing and our media plan that we do, we are able to, through our website and our media plan, track the results of our plan, how many people they brought here.

- Yeah, so when I say that too, 'cause you count people if they come from Fargo or Grand Forks or Minot as part of your travelers that come here, do you know how many come from out of state?

- You know, I don't have those numbers with me, we just kind of started a new program that we're starting to evaluate that more.

- Well, that would be interesting to see those numbers some time.

- We'll have to come back sometime, right?

- Yeah.

What kinds of services does the Bureau offer?

I mean, what are the services?

- Good question.

So for meetings and events, we're kind of the place that helps put it together.

We'll help them find the facility to meet in, we'll help them get hotel rooms, we'll help them get a block of rooms for that.

We kind of connect them to the community.

They need someone to see the national anthem.

Do they need to go to attractions?

Do they need a place for an evening event?

We have professional services.

We do banners and name badges for them.

We'll send out media releases for them.

One new thing that's brand new for us these last couple of months is we're now able to create a micro site for them.

You know, some of the larger places we'll do a conference website, but some of the smaller places can't do that.

So we'll do a micro site for them.

You can have any conference information you want on there.

We'll have the link for their hotel where they can book straight from there and get it.

We'll have a savings pass on there for places that they can get discounts.

So it's really a great new feature that we can offer for them.

- And obviously, this is for members.

- That's for any meeting and event planner.

- Yeah, but if an outside business from out of state just called you and said, "I wanna bring a meeting here," do you help them also?

- Absolutely help them.

Generally, they have to stay overnight.

We don't really work a lot with day meetings.

We'll point them in the right direction, but we're very active in the community outside the state.

We attend events all over the country to get people here.

- Sure, okay.

So does the Bureau often partner with other organizations in the area, and what kind of relationship or kind of work do you do in that arena?

- You know, we do.

We can't host a tournament or plan an entire event.

So we work, partnerships are really important to us.

We work with both the park departments in both cities quite frequently, on bringing events here, and really any kind of group that wants to, but we do rely on them a lot for, we do a lot of sporting events, and we rely on the Mandan and Bismarck Park Districts for that.

- So do you have sort of annual ongoing events that happen, or do you have a mixture of?

- Both, both.

You know, and it's very competitive.

You know, I think sometimes people think conferences just come here, and that's really not the case.

We build relationships with them, we do bids with them.

Sometimes they rotate through other cities, and sometimes, you know, they don't.

So it's a competitive business.

- Yeah.

Well, so why should people visit Bismarck and Mandan?

- You know, what I really think, you know, sometimes when we go to some of these things, and I'm with my colleagues from across the state, and they're talking about Madora, or they're talking about Fargo.

And I really think when you're here, you just have such a nice balance of both.

You know, you have all the amenities that the urban places have, but you start to see a little bit of the West, a little bit more of the Western feel, especially if you do some things in Mandan.

I just think it's just a really nice mix.

And when we talk to meeting and event planners, we say, you know, when you're in a big city, you're one of so many.

When you come here, people are probably gonna ask, "Why are you here in town?

"What are you here for?

"What are you doing?"

- Yeah.

With that said, if someone were to come to this area from the state or from out of state, where would you recommend they go first or what would you recommend they do first?

- Well, it probably depends on the time of the year.

But one thing that I've learned from my travels is most of the cities, their river areas are very industrial.

We are so lucky that ours isn't.

We have a beautiful river.

We have over 100 miles of trails between our two cities.

Much of it is along the river and you can go along the river and see a beautiful view without it being very industrial.

So even in the winter, you know, that's a nice thing.

Our downtowns are both very nice.

Our art galleries in both communities are really kind of fun to see.

- Yeah, I'd written down river, you beat me to that one, 'cause I wondered how much the river was utilized in attracting people and people being here.

What about some hidden gems?

Maybe something, maybe they really don't know about that you might could highlight for our viewers and listeners out there?

- Yeah, good question.

You know, I think, I briefly mentioned, but the art gallery is the one thing that people just are kind of not familiar with.

You can kind of, in both our downtowns, they're really beautiful.

And one thing that people should be on the top of their mind but they forget about is art.

We are so lucky that the State Museum is here in Bismarck.

It's free, it's only closed like three days out of the year, I think.

You can spend 10 minutes or four hours in there and it's free, there's something for people of all ages and even if you've been there, some of the exhibits change and we always like to say that's a good place to learn more about the entire state, but our community and it doesn't matter about the weather, it's always there.

- Well, what do you see as some of the biggest challenges that come up for your job?

- You know, I think some of the business challenges is as far as when we're working with the national, regional meeting events is getting here a little bit.

You know, they always assume it's so difficult to get here.

So we always kind of say, you know, but when you're here, you're here.

You can get anywhere within 15 minutes.

The perception of the weather, you know, we need to overcome that, you know, a little bit.

And the fact that they think there's nothing to do here.

So one of the things we really work with meeting and event planners is to get them out of the hotel, get them on the convention center.

We work hard so that they have off-site events in other places so they can really realize everyone has hotels and convention centers, but, you know, what are the extra things?

- So on the flip side of that, what's the best thing about your job, what are the positives of it?

- You know, I think, well, I have a great team.

I have a really great team that I work with, but, you know, I've lived my entire life in North Dakota, so I think I'm very lucky that I get to sell Bismarck and Mandan in the international market, we kind of sell the state as a whole.

And I have the added benefit of getting to sell the entire state in those aspects.

- Now you just mentioned international.

So how much of the international do you work on?

- You know, we partner with the Earthquake Tourism on that.

So they do a lot of the work for them, but we have a couple of meetings that we go to with them and we'll sit down and we will have, we have one that we go to in May of every year, Over three days, we will have about 70 20-minute appointments with operators from other countries, and we will sit down, and that time, we will have a map out, and we will walk 'em through the state, and we'll learn a little bit about them, and find out what they would like to do.

So, they are so interested.

They call it real America.

- So people don't really probably understand how much work you're doing for North Dakota, and for Bismarck-Mandan- - Well, it's my pleasure.

- Well, let's talk about the future.

How do you see the future?

Any major plans or major goals as the CEO?

- Yeah, we have just completed a destination master plan.

We spent much of last year working on that with a firm, and we've just completed that.

It's a 10-year plan, and we have seven pillars.

So it's broken down over 10 years with a lot in the next 3 to 5.

So we definitely have our work cut out for us.

- Sounds like it, and I look forward to it.

If people want more information and want to find out more, where can they go?

- Yep, so our website is noboundariesnd.com, or you can find us at 1600 Burnt Boat Drive.

- Okay, well, we wish you the best of luck, and we look forward to seeing more of Bismarck-Mandan.

- Thank you very much.

- Thank you for joining us today.

Stay tuned for more.

(upbeat music) Founded in 1961, the Concordia Language Villages in Bemidji, Minnesota, provides unique language learning opportunities to students of all ages and backgrounds.

The camp creates an immersive, natural learning environment that takes the pressure off of learning a new tongue.

For students and instructors alike, the benefit is not just to speak a new language, but to connect to something far greater than oneself.

(choir singing in foreign language) - There is no other place like this in the United States, or really in the world to my knowledge.

♪ Merci, merci ♪ When I talk about the Concordia Language Villages, our mission is to inspire courageous global citizens where you could come into the wonderful north woods of Minnesota and experience these culturally authentic sites, this deep immersion learning.

(upbeat music) - No one day is alike another.

Currently we have 14 languages for the youth programs in the summer.

It's getting even languages that are prevalent in this region, of course, German, French and Spanish as primary languages for, and taught in schools.

We're the only program that offers a high school credit course in the four weeks in the summer in the country in three different Asian languages, so Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

And then there's a number of other languages, including Arabic and Russian, Spanish, Portuguese.

- So what we're doing at the villages, you know, and it's evolved in those 65 years, but is essentially recreating a natural language learning environment.

So they're hearing the language spoken around them, whether or not they understand, whether or not they can reproduce that language, you know, immediately.

And they're having real opportunities to use the language, right?

So buying something at the store, right?

You're not going to get the thing until you get your money out of the bank and you ask for the thing in the language.

And of course all that usage is supported lovingly by staff.

If you want the butter that's on the far end of the 16-person dinner table, you're going to ask to have the butter passed in the target language, be it German, be it Danish, be it Japanese.

- This is actually year 10 for me.

It's kind of like a second home away from home.

It's somewhere that I have come back to for over half of my life.

Every summer there's so many familiar faces that I see.

I'm going into senior year this year, but I've actually already been accepted to college.

And I think this is likely what got me in.

So I'm going to be going to Middlebury College in February.

I'll be finishing my last semester of high school and then going to college.

And it was pretty much Lac du Bois and learning French and studying abroad that got me in.

So this has already changed my life.

- I really like to travel and I know a lot of countries speak French.

So learning French really helped me speak French in the other countries that I would like to visit.

So like France, of course, but also like there's a lot of African countries or countries in Europe too that speak French.

So, you can travel a lot and know like the culture of those places.

So it's really nice.

What I like about the Concordia Language Village is that it's immersive and so it's really easy to learn and how we sing songs.

It's really easy to learn French and especially for, if you know French already or if you're like a newcomer.

So, if like you're learning language for the first time or if you already have experience.

- In addition to our youth camps in the summer, we have a whole series of events throughout the winter and fall, fall and spring, including family camps where multi-generational families come and really experience the same sort of thing, but with a family unit.

Or you can come to an adult-only camp so you're learning German or French or Spanish with other adult learners.

And they have a very similar experience.

The principles of outdoor, playful learning.

One of the challenges of staffing at the villages, we need language experts.

People who are willing and able to speak the language at meals with youth, in cabins with youth.

So our staffing includes lots of people who were villagers, come back as counselors.

College students who are learning language at the college level will come and serve as counselors.

And then we also have a J-1 exchange visa program.

So we are able to get native language speakers from some of the countries that are represented with the languages we offer.

- Well, Gerry Haukebo is an amazing visionary, right?

I mean, in 1961, he'd worked with the college Board of Regents, the President Knudsen at the time, Joe Knudsen, and convinced him to try this language camp idea.

The camp idea, of course, is a big tradition in the US, and so that came to mind.

He had experience in Germany, where he was a principal at an army-dependent school for a while.

He was an education professor at Concordia as well.

But he was in Germany, observed how kids, his own kids included, were able to learn a language through play, essentially, through very unstructured but very natural interactions.

In 1966, they were able to 800 campers in five different languages.

In '62, they added French and then Spanish and Norwegian the following year, and '66 Russian.

So in '66, the college then purchased this property from a local family, the Batchelders.

They run still today, the Bemidji Woolen Mills, and we send our families there and to contribute to the economy locally, and thank them for being so supportive of the language villages.

They were very pleased when Concordia of course, then decided to establish itself with the language villages here in Bemidji.

Gerry just had this incredible gift of creating kind of a vision for a program.

A lot of the elements of that first year still exist today in our program.

The name tags people wear when they get a name from the target culture.

Over time of course the program has evolved and we became more aware of what those key elements were for a language village program.

and a really big part of it is the learning community, where everybody is in the same boat, where, you know, we have people who start from scratch, but also some people who are more advanced.

- [Group] Ni hao!

- There is an economic impact, right?

We're filling hotels and airplanes and, you know, peripheral businesses with our kids coming and going for programs, but we're also a pretty large employer in the Bemidji area.

We are known internationally for our work in language immersion.

There are certainly other rigorous and excellent language programs for young people in the United States.

I think we are unique in that we're doing that in the North woods of Minnesota, in an outdoor camp setting, and where we're really creating full immersion rather than kind of modeling after a classroom.

- I mean, it's incredible.

We have alumni in all kinds of positions.

Obviously some move away from the language study over time, but it still impacts them in terms of having had that experience and having their eyes open to different parts of the world, different experiences, even if they don't continue with that or travel necessarily to that region.

I mean, to me, it's just the idea that the language villages have, and the program concept and the design allows for language learners of all ages and all needs to benefit from the program.

- I've learned so much French from being here.

Like, being immersed in a village like this is like such an amazing opportunity and privilege for us to have here in Minnesota.

When I talk to people and tell them how I've learned French, they're like, "Oh, that's in Minnesota?

"That's crazy."

And so it's such a lovely opportunity to be here.

- I actually was working with some villagers at one of our villages last week.

They were a little bit kinda down in the mouth, having a rough day, so I went over and met with them, and one of them said to me, "Well, why do you do this job?

"Why do you stay?"

And I was like, "Well, I have got an answer "to that question."

It is incredible work.

It makes you believe in the human capacity to share, to create, to create peace, to learn each other's languages and cultures, to find common ground.

That is incredibly satisfying.

- Well, that's all we have for Prairie Pulse this week.

And as always, thanks for watching.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Funded by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4th, 2008.

And by the members of Prairie Public.