What started as a Columbia University grad student’s website about New York City’s secrets has evolved into one of the city’s most distinctive tour companies.
Today, Untapped New York hosts more than 15,000 visitors annually, leading them through hidden passages of Grand Central Terminal and abandoned subway stations and to the gilded mansions of Manhattan’s exclusive neighborhoods. But what sets them apart isn’t just their unusual locations — it’s their commitment to surprising even lifelong New Yorkers.
“If we can impress someone who’s been living in the city for 30 years, we can definitely blow the mind of someone who landed that morning,” says CEO Augustin Pasquet.
But we’ll never launch something that doesn’t excite New Yorkers first.
Here, Augustin shares how the company maintains its local authenticity while expanding internationally and how partnering with GetYourGuide is helping them let international visitors in on New York’s incredible secrets.
How did Untapped New York come to be?
“We fell into the tour business by accident. My wife started the website as a grad student at Columbia around 2012, sharing local discoveries — a hidden building here, an abandoned bank vault there. Her classmates wanted to contribute their own finds, and it quickly became crowdsourced by this inquisitive community. We grew into one of New York’s most-loved web magazines.
The turning point came when we organized a tour of the 100th anniversary of what was once the tallest building on Earth, the Woolworth Building, with the architect’s great-granddaughter. At the time, I worked in sales and marketing at L’Oréal, and my wife was unsuccessfully trying to pull me into this business.
Little by little, I looked under the hood of the tour business and realized the potential of these tours as an interesting revenue stream in addition to running ads on the site. And unlike advertising, that revenue is immediate. Before I knew it, I’d quit my job and joined full-time. I think that was 2015.”
What was your market at first?
“We started exclusively targeting New Yorkers, which was considered crazy — why would anyone take a walking tour of their own city? But we doubled down on that niche and developed something unique.
If you’re a tour company for tourists, you can have five neighborhood tours that don’t change because you get new visitors daily. With locals, they won’t take the same tour twice, so you need a much wider menu and truly special experiences.”
How did your tours evolve from that first Woolworth Building experience?
“That first tour taught us people are fascinated by places they think they know, but don’t really know at all, and that became our USP.
Whether it’s secrets of Grand Central Terminal, our New York Subway tour, or the Gilded Age mansions of Fifth Avenue, every experience has something that would be hard to discover on your own.”
When did GetYourGuide join Untapped’s journey?
“2020 was meant to be our year to reach international travelers, which didn’t go according to plan for obvious reasons, but GetYourGuide soon became an excellent partner for that expansion.
The platform immediately brought us more visitors from Germany, the UK, and across Europe.
We also saw a surprising boost in domestic tourists outside New York — our largest demographic now.
How do you use GetYourGuide’s platform to optimize your tours?
“The analytics in the performance section are invaluable — I’m very data-driven from my L’Oréal days. Being able to compare performance against the same period last year is crucial because travel is so seasonal.
The platform keeps evolving too, adding features like detailed itineraries that push us to keep our content fresh and engaging.”
What data do you find most useful?
“The GetYourGuide dashboard is incredibly user-friendly, and their market trend analysis is excellent. Recently, they sent insights about booking patterns and consumption trends that were very valuable.
Plus, their marketing execution is always spot-on. Having worked in marketing myself and knowing how they represent their suppliers in such a compelling way makes me feel good about being part of the platform.”
How do you ensure your tours appeal to both New Yorkers and visitors?
“Let’s take Grand Central — locals might pass through daily but never stop to look around because, well, it’s New York, everyone is rushing somewhere. Yet it’s a world-famous building that international visitors want to explore.
We’ve had to adapt our content slightly, never assuming people know what we’re talking about. If we mention the IRT subway line, we take that extra step to explain what non-New Yorkers might not know.”
How do you maintain quality and ensure a five-star experience?
“We have around 30 guides now, and we pay them better than most tour companies because we only want to work with the best.
We read and respond to every single review across all platforms weekly. Even if it’s painful, we discuss any review that isn’t five stars; there’s something we can learn from 95 percent of them.”
How important is visual content in attracting visitors?
“It’s crucial. People don’t read as much as they used to. They look at the hero image, the title, and the price. When our Underground Subway tour was added to the Originals by GetYourGuide program, they sent a photographer to capture the experience, which made a huge difference.
We’re constantly refreshing our photos because even the same location needs to be shown from different angles to capture people’s imagination.”
Are there any tours that stick out for you?
“We’ve had several wedding proposals during tours and couples who met on our tours who ended up getting married, which isn’t a service we offer but always great to hear.
Sometimes, we get amusing reviews, like when a guest left a one-star review because another guest, who they thought was a guide, didn’t share their umbrella. But that’s what happens when you run small, intimate tours — people connect, sometimes in unexpected ways!”
What’s next for Untapped New York?
“We’re growing fast — up 77 percent year-over-year on GetYourGuide — which is great, but we’re staying true to our roots. We’re not interested in launching generic tours, there are already a lot of people doing SoHo and Chinatown tours.
It’s the Blue Ocean Strategy: Focus on unserved needs and create something entirely unique. New York has endless secrets, and we’re still discovering them.”
Key Takeaways
- Untapped New York has seen exponential growth through GetYourGuide, with revenue and ticket sales increasing more than 3,000 percent from 2020 to 2024.
- The company successfully balances local and international audiences, with 55 percent domestic and 45 percent international visitors. Germany and the UK represent their largest international markets through GetYourGuide.
- Around 45 percent of their revenue is derived from direct/brand marketing, much of which is driven by OTAs.
- As part of the Originals by GetYourGuide collection, their Subway tour’s visibility is enhanced by professional photography and content created by GetYourGuide’s travel community.
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