City Running Tours is partnering with Fit Tours NYC to help you maintain healthy habits while vacationing in our incredible cities. Chicago guide Chelsey Grassfield sat down with City Running Tours President & CEO Michael Gazaleh and Fit Tours NYC founder Mike Riordan to learn more about this collaboration, so you can plan your next tour.
A rising tide floats all boats
Running the business on his own but wishing he could collaborate (and commiserate) with others, Gazaleh looked to the other fitness-based tour businesses in NYC. In 2019, he only found two others with the same model and goal of showcasing the city: Riordan’s Fit Tours NYC and Run Street. So Gazaleh reached out to "check in and see what they were up to." He thought, "maybe at the least we could be a sounding board for each other. We don't have partners; we don't have anyone. Maybe we can get together and work on things together."
Of that first meeting, Riordan chuckled, saying when he got the call from Gazaleh it felt like the Godfather, "walking into the place, looking around... leave the gun, take the cannoli kind of a meeting." Joking aside, what he took away from that meeting was their similar philosophy of a rising tide floats all boats. Riordan acknowledged how helping each other might sound odd because they were technically competitors, but it quickly became clear they could be even better as partners.
They were able to meet twice before the pandemic. Gazaleh and Riordan kept in touch, understanding better than anyone else how hard it was not to be able to do tours, connecting people with their city and, as Gazaleh put it, "that extra sauce of getting their exercise in."
Going for it post-pandemic
During those trying times, every conversation also included a positive point at which they'd say "man, we have something here, we can do something here." They knew together their sightseeing and wellness offerings could be even better. Riordan said, "we figured together we could probably accomplish more because we were both successful in one specific area. We're gonna be able to help each other in areas we were lacking, or missing, or not having that same success."
While Gazaleh knows this collaboration is good for business, he also values that over the last few years, "we're building a friendship." Each time they've gotten together recently, whether to scope out a new route or do an event, he's found it incredibly fulfilling. "Knowing that this product that [Riordan’s] been doing for a while and that I've been doing is going to be so much better because of what we were able to merge together."
Meeting all your travel needs
This collaboration couldn't have come at a better time. With revenge travel, where people are taking off to see their bucket list vacation destinations, City Fit Tours is combining their expertise in meaningful sightseeing and exercise to meet demand for health and wellness.
Mike put it best when he said of visitors, "Instead of seeing places, they want to do places."
In addition to running tours, City Fit Tours will include yoga walking tours and yoga biking tours. These are just a few of the exciting ways to do our cities.
