Kite Festival 2013

With Frontier days starting on Thursday, another big tourist event in Swift Current is looking back at what was a successful week.

Big crowds again attended the Windscape Kite Festival and Long Days Night Music Festival despite a disaster in Alberta that kept a lot of their visitors away.

"This year was a great festival," said Swift Current Culture Festivals Coordinator Shann Gowan. "Everything went really smoothly on our end. Our numbers were down a bit because of the flooding in Alberta. Long Days Night we had full houses most nights and the Kite Festival went really smooth."

Attendance wasn't down much despite how much of the usual Alberta crowd couldn't come.

Interview with Shann Gowan"We sat at just under 7000 people this year and we had 8000 last year," Gowan said. "The Comfort Inn had half of their rooms cancel with people from Alberta. Of the 140 people that have put in a survey only 4 of them are from Alberta."

Gowan noted they got more local attendance at the events this time around.

The feedback from those who made it was quite strong.

"The kite fliers that were here this year were phenomenal," Gowan added. "They're all starting to say it's one of the best festivals in the world that they go to."

Organizers took a couple of days off and will begin planning for next year's event again shortly.