The swinging lifestyle is full of great, respectful, professional, open and honest people, right? For the most part, I’d have to say “Yes!” I mean, where else can you go to a club, convention or a resort and meet people for the very 1st time, from a completely different part of the country (or world) and get invited over to their home? We have been to couples houses and even stayed overnight when traveling and I don’t even know their last names.

Because of the very nature of this “open” lifestyle, barriers are often broken down swiftly and friendships are made quicker than through traditional means. This gives us a great warm and fuzzy feeling about people we meet in the lifestyle as a whole, but that doesn’t mean that people still can’t be people. Or even that people who have the best of intentions, can’t still end up causing a mess.

This is especially true when you are dealing with someone in the “Lifestyle Business”.

Most lifestyle businesses are made up of a couple (or several couples) that are in this lifestyle and see a niche that they hope they can fill, whether it is opening up a new club or making a new product available. Most want to give the community something great but many fall short, usually because of under financing or simply not knowing how to run a business effectively. While there certainly are a few greedy folks who are totally in it for themselves, trying to make a buck off the lifestyle, they are in the minority… We’ll get to them later.

Going Down with the Ship
Some event producers have really good intentions, but they try to put something together that is way too large for them to handle. A good example of this has been some of the recent cruise ship ventures that have tried and failed.

There was a company called Adventure Cruises that planned to buy a cruise ship in Florida. The plan was to move the boat to Toronto for weekend “swingers” cruises on the Great Lakes. It never happened. Then, the very same guy launched a new company called Sir Edward Cruises and claimed it was buying another ship and that they would offer cruises 52 weeks a year out of Florida. Clubs and websites all over the country advertised this swinger cruise. No one had ever heard of Sir Edward Cruises or its owner, so nobody connected him to the other failed venture. People paid for the cruise and flew down to Florida expecting to be met at the airport… No one was there! You heard me right… People took off vacation time, paid for a cruise, bought tickets to Florida and ended up stuck, standing in the airport without a clue as to what to do. A total waste of their money and time.

More recently a venture called Hot Swingers Cruise announced that they intended to do a total cruise ship takeover. They promoted at conventions, created a website and promised everyone that “This time, this was for real”. Well, several months prior to sailing, they pulled the plug. Not enough sales, not enough money to make it happen. At least these guys were giving full refunds.

We just heard of a new group that is trying to book a 1,300+ cabin ship for a lifestyle takeover cruise. I haven’t heard much about this new venture, but it has the same things in common with the rest: The people in charge are not travel agents, they do not have a large client list of existing potential customers, they can’t produce a contract with a ship showing financial stability and most importantly, they can’t explain why they think this cruise event will succeed where others have failed. “Because it will!” is not a good enough answer. Successful business ventures need a good business plan, extensive marketing, experience and most importantly… Money!

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t want you running away from all cruise ship promotions after reading this article. Castaways Travel successfully sold out an entire small cruise ship down the Danube River in Eastern Europe this past summer. Lifestyles Travel has chartered successful Windjammer cruises in the Caribbean. Bob and Tess from French Connection Events booked over 100 cabins on a two week Mediterranean cruise in 2007 and I hear they have booked 300 cabins on a Mexican Riviera cruise coming up this fall. Why do all of these cruise ventures succeed? Because they all stuck to reasonable amounts of cabins.

An average cabin on a cruise ship can cost anywhere between $800-$2000 per person depending on the type of cabin. Then add the cost of attending the “event”, the airline tickets, food and sightseeing expenses… We’re talking about $5000-$10,000+ per couple! A cruise ship with 1,300 cabins will typically be almost 100% booked before it sets sail. Do you think it’s easy for event promoters to find 1,300 swinging couples who are all willing to spend $5000-$10,000 AND who are all able to take vacations on the exact same week? To truly “takeover” an entire ship, the cruise company would be expecting the promoter to guarantee them several MILLION dollars in cabin bookings… Is it any wonder that all these huge and ambitious “total takeover” cruises failed?

The successful swinger cruises I’ve mentioned aimed to fill only about 100-300 cabins. They are all licensed Travel Agents, with extensive client lists, solid reputations and enough capital to put down significant deposits to secure a cruise ship and ensure their events do set sail. We haven’t been on any of those cruises yet, but we hope to catch one in the near future. We love cruises! We have been on three “vanilla” cruises so far, so the thought of being on a ship with a few hundred fun swinging people is very appealing to us.

Conventional Conventions
The biggest convention I ever went to was the Lifestyles Convention (LSO) in Las Vegas back in 2000. It drew up to 2,000 couples (that’s 4,000 people!), with hundreds of vendors, an art show, pool parties, sponsors, seminars and demonstrations. They had first class signage, programs, decorations, entertainment and all the things you would expect from a professional convention.

Most lifestyle conventions will fall in the range of 150 to 1,000 rooms. Some buy out part of a hotel, but the best ones get the entirehotel. Most are couples only, while some allow singles.

My first problem I had with a convention was back in 1999, when we booked our fourth convention at Visions, in Tampa, FL. It was one of our favorite conventions, 500 rooms, a complete hotel takeover on an Indian reservation, so the rules were relaxed. We paid for our room a year in advance so we could get first choice of rooms. A few months prior to the event, we heard a bunch of rumors that the convention wasn’t going to happen and that the hotel was being sold. After a few inquiries to the promoters, we were assured that everything was O.K. In fact, they even talked us into sending them the rest of the balance of our deposit… Then, like a thief in the night, they were gone. No convention, no one to return our calls or e-mails. No way to get our money back. They simply took the money and ran. That sucked. While losing our money didn’t make us happy, we were even more upset that we were going to miss this chance to party with our friends and the opportunity to make new friends.

Then we heard about a new convention that was coming to Atlanta. They even had Bob McGinley (founder of LSO) as their keynote speaker, so we figured it had to be a real event… But it never happened. Then a new convention in Chicago. One in San Padre Island, TX. Another one in Atlanta… Yep, none ever happened.

When Interludes started up in Orlando, we waited to see if it would really happen. We were excited when it actually did (We had friends that went, so we knew for sure that it really happened). We went to the 2nd year of Interludes in both Orlando and Dallas. We went again for their 3rd year… and then everything fell apart. A news story about one of their events made national news. Even though the story was incorrect, the damage was done. Their current hotel didn’t want them to hold their event anymore. Other hotels shied away. First Orlando was canceled, then Dallas… Damn it! We liked that party! We need more good parties, not less…

This year Lifestyles, the country’s largest swinger event planner, filed for bankruptcy. We haven’t seen anything about their national convention and can only speculate that it isn’t happening this year, if ever again. I was shocked when I heard the news, how could a business that has 30 years of history with a huge client base go out of business? I guess it’s because a lifestyle business is just like any business. No matter how long you are in business, you need to constantly evolve. You need to make sure your business is relevant, fresh, new and current. To tell you the truth, the last few Lifestyles conventions I attended were pretty lame. It’s like they stopped trying. What was great 30 years ago isn’t always the same as what’s great today.

I must add a disclaimer here and say that there are some really great event producers out there and not every event stops due to a catastrophic failure. We’ve heard nothing but good things about the Toronto and Chicago conventions which are no longer being produced. These couples simply decided to move on and no longer produce events. They left on top of their game with a great reputation and a long list of satisfied customers.

Currently, there aren’t a lot of big conventions being produced. The only ones I know of are in Niagara Falls (Entice), Myrtle Beach (Playcate), New Orleans (Naughty in N’awlins), Key West (Couples Fest), and some large camp outs like Swingstock in Minnesota or Swingfling in Wisconsin. There is a new convention (Show-Me) that is growing in Missouri. There are also a few lifestyle friendly resorts like Live Oak in Texas and The Grove in Georgia which host several large special events each year.

There are also some large events stemming from different swinger dating websites which are becoming more successful than traditional conventions. We think this trend will continue to grow. Lifestyle Lounge takes over a 500 room hotel every year in Las Vegas and SDC takes over an entire resort in Spain.

A Smart Consumer is a Happy Consumer

Why write an article about all of this doom and gloom and failures? Because I am both a business man and a lifestyler and I want lifestyle businesses to wake up and get the big picture. They need to have a good plan and proper financing BEFORE going out on a limb. “Build it and they will come” only works in the movies. You have to build slowly and steadily. No one goes from nothing to successful overnight.

I also want to wake up the customers out there. It’s time you expected more! Don’t blindly spend your money without knowing what you are getting or the potential risks involved. Check to see what history a lifestyle company has before spending your money with them. Is this their first convention or their tenth? Have they had successes or failures? Do you know people that have attended their past events? What do they say?

Tips on How to be a Smart Lifestyle Consumer:

• Use a credit card and buy within 6 months of an event. If the event is cancelled, you can always dispute the charge. Be wary of events that only take Paypal or checks, that should throw up a red flag that this event might not be produced by professionals.
• Make sure you know where the event is taking place and that it is a well known, reputable hotel/cruise line.
• If you are really concerned, contact the hotel, resort or cruise line to confirm that the event is actually taking place. They should be able to confirm that the event is booked and proceeding as planned, although they may not be able to give a lot of details about it.
• Use common sense. If a new promoter is giving you numbers that don’t fall in line with other events in the same area or the same type of event, they are probably exaggerating.

Please don’t think that I’m saying you should boycott all first time events. We’ve been to many first time events that were incredible. What I’m saying is be a smart consumer. Just because it’s a “lifestyle” business doesn’t mean that the “Swinger Gods” have blessed it… It’s still a business.

You’re probably thinking “If you know so much about it, then you should go out and start a lifestyle business”. No thanks! I’ve been around the lifestyle for a long time and I’ve seen what these event planners and club owners go through. Less partying with more headaches. I’m much happier being a smart customer… All the fun and no responsibilities, now that sounds like a good time to me!

There are many great event planners, resort options, local clubs and cruises out there for open-minded people like us. We hope more lifestyle businesses flourish in the upcoming years and more choices pop up for us consumers. We love to travel, and we think that traveling with other open-minded couples is the only way to go. We’ve met our best friends and had our most exciting times at many of these events. We shouldn’t let a few bumps in the road deter us from having our fun.. But it’s always better to be an informed shopper.

Happy partying,
The Couple that Gets Around