Swinging in Style | An Interview with Swinger Party Planning Powerhouse, French Connection Events | Kasidie.com, the Swinger's Lifestyle Magazine

A Little Something Extra from the Swinger's Magazine

"Space Oddity" themed rooftop, moments before guests arrive at the LLIVE 2007 event in Las Vegas

Bob and Tess at someplace during something during the Swinger Event

Bob & Tess at their takeover of the club Tao, at the Venetian Hotel during LLIVE (Las Vegas, 2007). Photo by Wilkinson.

At first glance, Bob & Tess Hannaford wouldn't strike you as your typical party promoters, and you'd be right. With indefatigable smiles they seem to treat everyone they meet as if they were old friends. Bob speaks with the warmth and wit of your best friend delivering a wedding toast. Hearing Tess laugh, it's difficult to resist the urge to hug her. If you didn't know better you might think you had just met the nice married couple who owned that corner bakery in your hometown, rather than the masterminds behind some of the largest, sexiest and most innovative lifestyle events in the country.

They are the owners of French Connection Events, and they are raising the bar when it comes to national (and international) lifestyle travel.

Kasidie had the pleasure of sitting down with Bob Hannaford, the right side of the brain that is French Connection Events.

BOB: We met in college. Were were two young and crazy art students. I had never kissed a single woman in my whole life. Tess definitely had me beat there.

BOB: [Laughs] Well, both sides of the rainbow. She had more experience than I did. She had actually been engaged and had lots of boyfriends and had experimented when she was young with different women. So when we met she was a very experienced person and I was a very inexperienced person. But we became best friends throughout college. It was after we became friends that we got together romantically and quickly moved on from there.

BOB: I was a shy religious person. It was a tough decision whether to go to art school or to... well... not seminary school, because I wasn't catholic. But I was looking to get a degree in religious studies and instead I went to art school. So, Tess found me as a very shy, insecure christian zealot. I guess she robbed me of my morals and quite changed my life. We dated a couple of years, then we got married.

“Her big surprise was, "I'd like to bring a girl home one night and see what that's like." So I said, "I have to sit down for this!?" I stood up and started doing cartwheels.”

Guests dancing at a French Connection Event. (Hey isn't that ourÊDecemberÊUnicorn and Cover Girl?!)

Guests dancing at a French Connection Event. (Hey isn't that our December Unicorn and Cover Girl?!)

BOB: I guess there was an innate curiosity in me to know what other women would be like, since I'd only been with one in my life. Tess was very experimental and she actually approached me about the idea. First she said, "Bob, you need to sit down." So I sat. Then she says, "What I'm about to tell you doesn't mean I love you any less." I started freaking out! Her big surprise was, "I'd like to bring a girl home one night and see what that's like" So I said, "I have to sit down for this!?" So I stood up and started doing cartwheels.

BOB: Yeah. But afterward I asked, "Well how on earth will we find a girl like that? Where do we go, where do we start? How do we look?" In those days we didn't have the internet. Tess says, "Well you know our neighbor? She's coming over tonight if that's okay. I've already arranged it all." And that's how it started. We've been together 23 years now... almost 24... I'll have to do the math there. It was a long time ago. But at that time we still didn't have the internet to meet people. We were just fucking our friends.

BOB: Well we didn't know that there was a subculture out there of other people like us. We just had friends over and had a few drinks... One thing led to another and we'd tell them about our crazy time with our other friends and then they would say "Hey, lets give that a try!"

BOB: Not so much. There were a few couples that afterwards said something like, "I can't believe we just did that! That was so crazy! Oh my God, what were we thinking?!" And Tess and I thought, "I dunno, we thought it was pretty cool" A few friends we never progressed with but some became regular partners for many years.

Bob : Oh yeah of course. A couple people. Yeah we can't all bat a thousand like you!

“I said, "Man, I wish someone would open a club in New Orleans!" One of our friends said, "Are you kidding me, Bob? You're those people!”

BOB: We didn't do too bad- – 'course we were young back then. We didn't have too much trouble. Some of those people we keep in touch with over the course of 18 years. So anyway that progressed to going online. AOL was the only option for awhile. I remember one day going into a couples chat room and people were talking about this stuff. All of the sudden it hit me that there were other people like us actively going out and finding other couples. We weren't the only ones! That was a big epiphany in our lives. Soon after, I was transferred to New York City and we started going to clubs. Back then 9 out of 10 people on the internet were fakes or single men or just wouldn't show up. So we went to many clubs, Le Trapeze and Anita's, Michael's. Then we eventually got transferred to New Orleans which had no clubs.

Nude Ice Sculpture for a Martini Bar at one of their events

Nude Ice Sculpture for a Martini Bars at one of their events. Photo by Wilkinson.

BOB: I worked for the Coast Guard. They transferred me and of course Tess went along wherever I went. We picked New Orleans because of its adult party reputation. We had a choice between middle-of-nowhere, Oregon, the middle of nowhere Northern California, really the middle of nowhere, Alaska... Alabama and New Orleans. We jumped on New Orleans, "That's gotta be a party place!" We were really disappointed. There were no clubs. So we spent a lot of time on the internet cultivating lists of people in the area and inviting them to our home. Eventually one night we had 75 couples in our home – Which is a lot of people to have in your house – and I said, "Man, I wish someone would open a club in New Orleans!" One of our friends said, "Are you kidding me, Bob? You're those people!" We'd built up this network of people, so we decided, "Let's do it!" So we rented out a restaurant in downtown New Orleans in the French Quarter. It was on our 11th wedding anniversary and we threw our first real party where we charged admission. We didn't charge much, didn't care who came. We had 22 couples at that first party. We quickly grew to where we were having hundreds of people coming to our monthly socials around the country. So French Connection events was born.

BOB: Well, we threw our parties in the French Quarter and we wanted to be a place where open minded people could connect. We didn't want a name that sounded like 'swingers' or anything bad. We wanted to be able to talk to people about it and be discreet. We threw our parties for the next few years which were themed parties mainly. Our next big career move was the result of a Halloween event a few years later. The local ABC affiliate did an undercover story on swingers and they went to one of our parties with hidden cameras. So there we were, front and center for all of New Orleans to see. They blurred out all the faces and even went as far as to synthesize the voices. But being in the Coast Guard – that was not a good career move. Especially because of my genius decision to wear my Coast Guard flight suit as my Halloween costume.

BOB: It was, but there were five of us at the party wearing our Coast Guard flight suits! So when that made the news they immediately launched an investigation to find out who the hell in the Coast Guard is throwing sex parties? So it really shook me up because I had 15 years working for the government.

KASIDIE: You were still employed by the government? You hadn't given up the Coast Guard to host these parties?

BOB: No, we were just doing the parties for fun. We figured it was no big deal doing a party once a month. We thought, "What does the government care what we do in our own time behind closed doors?"... Well, we found out that they do care. Thankfully, I never got brought up on charges.

BOB: Well there were a lot of people that I was stationed with that knew it was me. I even knew some of the investigators and they absolutely knew it was me. So I think the investigation came dangerously close. Some people helped keep the heat off of me. It just so happened to be my time to re-enlist... and if I did reenlist for another 4 years they would probably move me somewhere else and we would have left all our friends behind in New Orleans. We fell in love with New Orleans, so we had a choice to make. We could stop doing our parties, go underground, get transferred somewhere else or... I made the choice not to re-enlist. We got real jobs working for a graphics company. We love the city of New Orleans so we wanted to make that our permanent home and to move forward. So that was a pretty major career move for us. Our parties continued to grow and we traveled around the country going to conventions.

BOB: lifestyle conventions. lifestyles in Vegas, Visions in Tampa. When we told people we were from New Orleans, they'd always say, "That's the #1 city we've always wanted to go to!" or they'd say, "That's our favorite town!" So we started getting the feeling that New Orleans was a very high demand destination for lifestyle couples. Around that time the restaurant we were renting closed down, so we had to find another venue. We started throwing parties at a hotel near the airport. We were renting 50-100 rooms per night. Some of them for 2-3 nights, and holding pretty large balls. So eventually we approached the hotel about buying out the entire hotel and putting on a real weekend-long convention like we had seen in other places. Our first convention was a huge success, because we got 178 couples to come to it... But financially it was a huge failure, because the hotel had 300 rooms. So we only filled up 1/2 the hotel. I had to take a loan out for $20,000 to pay off the debt incurred for the weekend. But the good news was that everyone had a great time. Our guests thought that we did some things very differently from other conventions they'd been to, and they loved the city of New Orleans. So we thought we should give it another try.

KASIDIE: $20,000 a lot of money to lose. Not a lot of people would look at that loss and say, "Hey, let's do that again!"

BOB: Yeah it really was a very difficult decision. But during the event we had almost 100 couples come up to us and want to pre-register for next year. We said we didn't even know what the dates were – and of course I kept worrying that we already owed a lot of money to this hotel that we didn't fill up. But these guests said, "We don't care about the dates. Let us just give you a deposit, lock us in! We're going to tell all our friends and we're coming back in force next year." So with that 100 couples' deposits committing to us for the next year and telling us they'd tell other people, we made the educated decision that if everyone brought back one couple, we'll be okay. Sure enough we sold out a month and a half early next year and it was a wild success. We did several more sellouts in the next couple years and even had to use two or three other hotels for overflow. Eventually we moved to downtown New Orleans. Once we moved on to Bourbon Street that's what put us over the edge. People loved to be able to walk out of their hotel on to Bourbon Street, the whole atmosphere of being downtown. We grew from three-hundred guests our first year to over two-thousand people in 2004.

“At a lot of conventions you never leave the hotel. We wanted to make sure anywhere we did an event, you felt like you were there and saw that town and experienced the food, the music, whatever makes that town special.”

KASIDIE: That's quite a growth. You mentioned that you do things differently than other events. I've been to many conventions all over the country by different promoters and I've also been to a lot of your events. I'll agree that there definitely is a difference. What is it about your events that makes them stand apart?

The City of New Orleans blocks off Bourbon St for Bob & Tess' parades that feature real Mardi Gras floats, beads, stiltwalkers, a brass band and even a Police motorcycle escort! Photo by Wilkinson.

BOB: Well our philosophy, first and foremost, is we want to put together a party that we would want to go to. We saw a lot of great things at other parties and we also saw a lot of not so great things. I really wanted to spend the extra money to make people feel they were getting a little extra. In New Orleans there's a term; Lagniappe, its a Cajun term. It means; A little something extra. That became our mantra. Something else I think separates us is when we go to a convention, be it in Vegas, Chicago or Tampa, we're there for that convention – but we also want to see that city. So we decided with our events to expand beyond the hotel onto Bourbon street, into clubs, into places like the House of Blues, strip clubs, famous party places. We decided to do a parade right down Bourbon Street to give a true Mardi Gras experience with beads, floats, stilt walkers, a brass band. We had crawfish, oysters, shrimp and jambalaya... We wanted to give them the true New Orleans experience. At a lot of conventions you never leave the hotel. You could be in a hotel in Des Moines, Iowa and never know the difference. We wanted to show the difference. We wanted to make sure anywhere we did an event, you felt like you were there and saw that town and experienced the food, the music, whatever makes that town special. Another thing we did that I think really separated us from everyone else is that we had very elaborate hospitality suites.

BOB: A lot of times during conventions you might meet people and you're dancing sexy, flirting and having a good time. They might invite you up to their room... But if nobody asks you up to their room what do you do? A lot of people at these dances stay till the very end, don't meet anybody and then they end up going back to their rooms by themselves. So we created some very intimate, sensual, beautiful areas where people would feel comfortable. We've been to some events where they just take a regular hotel room and they say, "There you go! Shizzam! There's your hospitality suite." Then you end up with a lot of people sitting around, basically just another reflection of the dance. We took our hospitality suites and used a lot of silks, fabrics from India, elaborate lighting, special music. We put incense and different fragrances in each room creating individual and different atmospheres. We might have Indian music playing in one room and jazz in another, electronica in another. In a lot of clubs we've been to if you throw six mattresses into an empty room with white walls everybody was satisfied... Well, maybe the guys were satisfied. What we did was turn those white walls into red velvet walls or blue peacock silk or into a white gauze fabric with soft light shining through. Then we would break the areas up into lots of different themes; dungeon, electric room – People could explore their own sexuality in a safe sensual place, where for the first time the women were appreciative of the atmosphere. Guys don't really care in most cases. In most cases if the women feel comfortable, then everybody's happy. Our hospitality suites are not for everyone but they created a sensual place that people could go to if they didn't hook up at the party... Or maybe they did meet someone, but just didn't want to go back to their rooms. It gave them a central location for really exploring all kinds of sexuality. So we became well known for our hospitality suites, for the entertainment and for the little something extra... the Lagniappe, that we put into our events. That's what got us off the ground.

KASIDIE: Something I'm always amazed by at your events is how you completely take over these big clubs and hotels which are really nice places. In Vegas you were able to to take over some of the top nightclubs in town... That's an accomplishment in itself. But you're walking into these famous high-end venues and saying, "Hey, I wanna bring in a couple thousand swingers and take over your place." I'm surprised you don't get tossed out the door!

BOB: I can answer that with two words: Money Talks. We learned a long time ago that you need a good reputation. If we rented out the House of Blues for instance, then we'd go to a club in Vegas like Studio 54 at the MGM or Tao at the Venetian. Once you do a couple of them you can use them as references. But it really all comes down to money. They all want a pretty substantial deposit and guarantees. One thing we learned is not to be greedy. We give back to our audience. If they're going to spend the money to come to our events, then we need to spend money to make sure they have an experience that they won't forget and one they'll definitely want to come back to. So by reinvesting our money into the next event and we feel like we're investing in our future success because people come back. One of the things we hear over and over again from our guests is, "We can really see where our money was spent when we come to your events." We put on a real production. At a recent event we did we had a 100 foot dome to simulate a Space Center. It really transformed the space and people were like "Wow!". It cost $12,000 to do, but its something everybody remembers. Then everyone's always wondering what we're going to do next year.

KASIDIE: I remember your LLIVE New Orleans event in 2006 had a huge pre-booking, then Hurricane Katrina happened and you had a massive amount of cancellations. But rather than cutting corners on the event like most people probably would, you actually poured more money into the event in order to make sure it was extra spectacular for the smaller crowd that did show up. I've always been impressed by that.

BOB: Katrina was definitely a setback for our business. New Orleans suffered a big hit, it was such a large disaster to the entire city as a whole, the work force, the reputation. The way the media portrayed it didn't help and people cancelled out of fear. But if our event doesn't have as many people as we planned for and therefore doesn't make the revenue that we planned for... It is not the fault of the attendees that those other people cancelled. They should expect the same quality event whether five hundred people or a thousand showed up. That's about what happened with the LLIVE in New Orleans event. We were expecting a thousand people and ended up with about half that. We started thinking about what we could cut out. Can we cut out the shrimp? Can we cut out the ice sculptures? Should we not do the parade? But just because the numbers were down the year after Katrina we decided we couldn't cut our quality down. So instead of trying to save the money, we saved the customers. That's the mantra we use with our company. Instead of looking at this one event we're looking long term. We have a lot of repeat customers that come back year after year after year. A lot of people tell their friends, "You gotta go to one of Bob & Tess' events!" We don't want the one time they come to be the time we cut back on stuff. We probably could've gotten away with it the year after Katrina, but we decided against it. It's a good thing we didn't because a year later we sold out that event in Vegas and the next year in New Orleans we did very well and sold that hotel out. So we were able to rebound faster than I think we would have if we had cut back.

KASIDIE: You have some events that attract predominantly younger couples in their 20's and 30's, other events attract a more mature and affluent crowd. Yet I've also seen a mixture of both demographics at many of your events. That's something I haven't seen many other promoters do. How exactly do you manage to do that?

“If you're going to take the time to go on a
Mediterranean Cruise, or a cruise to Mexico, or go
visit Europe, how much more fun would it be to go
with a group of open minded people?”

Enjoying a cocktail and the view on Bob & Tess' Mediterranean Cruise.

BOB: We make a decided effort to market to many different areas, not just demographics. We try to market to different ethnicities, different ages and we market on different sites. Some sites cater to younger folks, like lifestyle Lounge and some that cater to a more mature crowd, like Swing lifestyle. I think we're giving every customer the opportunity to find what they're looking for. There's a lot of event planners that try to seek only the young and beautiful and that's fine. But what we've found is when people come to an event like ours they're looking to expand their horizons and we challenge them to come with an open mind. I can't tell you how many people have told us, "We never would have met this couple at another party and we're so glad we came here when we did!" It's true that birds of a feather flock together and at our events you might get a certain age group sitting together at a table but we give them enough places to mix and mingle. There might not be 20 year old couples partying with 60 year old couples, but we've found that you learn something from everybody, from their experience, from their history. You learn something at every event you go to. I think by having a diverse crowd we've created a very diverse event and I think people take more away from it.

KASIDIE: You've gone beyond doing only events and also expanded into the lifestyle travel business?

BOB: We have an innate love for travel, for seeing the world, for seeing diverse cultures. We like to see beyond "Our Town USA". We started with Caribbean Reef Club then group trips to Hedonism. Eventually we started putting together lifestyle trips to places like Amsterdam and the Mediterranean Cruise we just went on. We found that open minded people love to travel... And if you're going to take the time to go on a Mediterranean Cruise, or a cruise to Mexico, or go visit Europe, how much more fun would it be to go with a group of open minded people? That way you can not only see these great destinations but you get to party a little bit on the side. At the very least you can talk openly and honestly and really have a fun sexy time traveling the world and seeing things. Instead of travel vacations, we've developed a company that produces travel adventures. Our adventures are hosted personally by Tess and me. We're right there experiencing it with you. We always go and research it beforehand. Everywhere from Jamaica to Mexico to Europe – We figure out all the best places to go beforehand, then take a group of people so they can experience it with a bunch of fun friends instead of being alone on a tour bus with a bunch of strangers. We're hoping to take a group to the Far East soon.

BOB: My first answer would be just the sheer openness. I can be who I am. We can be who we are and not have any regrets. When I go out with people in the lifestyle, I don't have to care about what I say. I can be Bob. Tess can be Tess. We love being Bob & Tess. I think that freedom is the #1 satisfaction for us. We've met a lot of people that have become really good friends. It doesn't mean we've slept with a lot of people... (laughing) Okay, maybe we have slept with a lot of people. But the thing is if we're in Jamaica by ourselves we're able to make friends because we have something in common. The friendliness, the sociableness and the openness is the #1 thing that we love about the lifestyle. The second thing we love is the pleasure we get from being able to step back in the middle of one of our events, put our backs to the wall and see thousands of people dancing partying laughing having a good time, hugging, kissing and multiple levels beyond that... and knowing that we put this together. We helped these people come together and have a weekend that they'll never forget. For some of them this might be their only experience. For some this might be the beginning of a whole new lifestyle. For others it's just another party in a long line of parties. But either way, we pulled off a party that everybody else is enjoying it and that brings us a lot of pleasure.

KASIDIE: You two are both public about your involvement in the lifestyle and have even appeared on 20/20. It's rare to meet people who are so open about being involved in the lifestyle.

BOB: Well its important to differentiate that we're in the lifestyle business. We do a lot of business seminars for a lot of new club owners and one of the first things we tell people is, "If you're in this business you have to be ready and accept that everybody's gonna know." We were outed by the media, by this ABC show and that's what pretty much put us out there. We think that discretion and privacy are of utmost importance because most people simply can't be out. We long for a day when everybody can be open and honest with no repercussions. But we're not in that place yet.

BOB: Without a doubt. I think sexual freedom movement has been growing rapidly over the last hundred years. For people to think we're sexually repressed, go back to the 1800's and think about how repressed sexuality was back then. Think of the 1920's when your bathing suit came down below your knee. Go back to the 1950's where everybody had a crew cut and wore long dresses and girls weren't even allowed to wear pants. It has been a progression. The 60's of course became more wild. The 70's and the disco times became even more wild. The progress of sexual freedom is not a straight line, its more like sine wave. You get a big jump in freedom and then there's sometimes a backlash. Then after the backlash there's another jump in sexual freedom. But if you look at reproduction rights, sexual history and sexual rights, we're much better off today than we were even twenty years ago... And I hope that we'll be much better off twenty years from now. But there's a lot of people that have to be discreet because of their jobs their family. So we do everything in our power to make sure nobody finds out anything about people who come to our parties. But because Tess and I are in this business – Well, if you can't deal with your family knowing, your friends knowing and your work knowing, you shouldn't be in this business. I'm on the board of the NCSF (National Coalition for Sexual Freedom) and we're working every week to try to make what we do a little less tabloid, a little less titillating, so we're a little more tolerated and accepted. People thought gays would never get rights. People thought there would never be legal strip clubs. But all these things have happened as we've progressed as a society. Europe is way ahead of us on this stuff and America is slowly coming along.

KASIDIE: Your son knows what you do. Was there an actual time when you told your son or did he just grow up knowing that you were in this business?

BOB: He heard some things and disseminated information to a point where he knew there was something going on. Things really came out when we were on TV, when they did the undercover story on us. The phone rang while we were watching the story. It was our son's friends calling up to say, "Is that your mom and dad?"

BOB: We sat him down and had a long talk with him. The first thing I asked him was, "How many of your friends have both their mom and dad still together?" And he said almost none. I said, "Your mom and dad have been together for almost 20 years. We've never had a fight, we've never had a big argument, we love each other." I told him that people are going to ask him things... and they might even say really mean things, especially about his mom, that's going to really upset him. I told him that all he needed to say is, "Look I don't know what my parents do in private. Do you know what your parents do? All I know is my parents are together and they love each other" That's all there is to say. We didn't try to explain to him our values or our morals. We try to lead by example. He sees that his parents love and trust each other. Most people only figure this out on their second marriage. Most can't figure it out in their first. A majority of people we meet in the lifestyle are on their second marriages and they've finally gotten to the "Me" part of their lives where they say, "You know what? I wanna have some fun! I wanna explore some things! I'm not afraid like I was in my first relationship!" They're finally getting it. Well, Tess and I are just lucky we got it early. So we lead like that to our son. I don't think he truly understands the full extent of what the lifestyle is or what we do. Probably just like when I think about my parents... I don't wanna think about it. I think my parents were probably swingers too. In fact, I have no doubt... But I don't like thinking about that.

KASIDIE: [Laughs] You suspected your parents? Do you think this might run in your blood then?

BOB: I think its a possibility. I just thought my parents were cool... And I hope our kid thinks we're cool. We've tried to keep our lifestyle business separate from him. He's worked for us once or twice when we were understaffed. But he didn't actually work inside the event... and we prefer to keep it that way. There's a lot of kids that work for the parents in the lifestyle industry. It is a difficult job for hiring. We usually can't put an ad in the newspaper, so a lot of people turn to their families, just like any other business. He's in the Coast Guard now. Who knows, in a couple years when he's 25 or 30 and has experienced life a little bit more, if he wants to be more involved and actually work at one of our events we'll talk about it. But for now he's gotta grow up and figure out his life. Whatever his path, I just hope he gets lucky and finds the right girl early in his life like I did...

An afternoon Pool Party at one of Bob & Tess' swinging events

An afternoon Pool Party at one of Bob & Tess' events.

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