Brooklyn Tour Company Forges Ahead Online Despite Pandemic

By Benyamin Davidsons

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, shuttering all nonessential businesses, husband-and-wife team Cindy VandenBosch and Andrew Gustafson decided to reinvent their nine-year-old Brooklyn tour company.

Turnstile Tours, founded in 2012, had seven employees at the time and was offering  471 tours annually of locations including the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Walking Waterfront, Essex Market, food carts, Prospect Park and the Brooklyn Army Terminal.  Tour offerings also included less formal attractions such as public markets, street vendors and urban ecology with history and landscape while walking through Brooklyn’s Prospect Park.  The company’s aim was to improve residents’ knowledge of what’s going on in the area and showcase “the people who keep the city running,” VandenBosch told Crain’s NY.

When people could no longer gather due to the Coronavirus, the company faced 1,500 cancelled or refunded reservations.  The team refused to give up hope, and decided that their staff still had the knowledge and there was still an audience.  They dreamed up online tours, as a way to keep people busy at home.  “Our employees have this body of knowledge that they’ve been building of New York. There’s so much content that doesn’t make it on a tour because it’s site specific,” VandenBosch said. “Our idea was: What can we show people and share with them in this virtual space?”

As reported by Crain’s, the company swiftly began offering virtual programs in March 2020. During the first 100 days of the pandemic, Turnstile offered daily programs and created a monthly membership program, trying to recover some of its business.  Online offerings included interviews, lectures, walking tours and even cooking and art demos.  Thanks to their hard work, the company made $100,000 in revenue last year, which is impressive even if it is well below the $200,000 they made in 2019.

Now, as New York continues on the road to recovery, the company has figured out yet another new business model to keep it afloat with the times.  Turnstile wants to continue offering virtual programming, saying that it can also be a way to reach an audience outside of New York.  The company now also has an online library of video content.  Also, the company wants to start touring in-person, outdoors, sensing that New Yorkers are ready to get out again, in a safe environment.  “If we had not done virtual programs, we wouldn’t have been able to bridge the gap,” VandenBosch said. “The question is: How do we harness all we learned and all the unique challenges we faced this year into whatever this next phase will be?”