Business booming for city tours via duck boats or trolleys

There was supposed to only be one Culture to Ketchup Tour on Molly’s Trolleys Saturday.

But the 30-seat trolley for that sold out by mid-week. So they added another. That filled by Thursday. Then they added a third. It was filled by Friday. They added a fourth, and that was expected to be mostly full Saturday afternoon.

If that seems odd for a Saturday in mid-February in Pittsburgh, you would be right. Good weather, a home Penguins game Sunday, and the Auto Show at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center clearly helped boost attendance.

But Molly’s Trolleys — those distinctive red-sided buses that look like old-fashioned trolleys and are pervasive on Downtown’s streets — and its sister tour company, Just Ducky Tours, have had a lot of that good luck over the last six years. It was that long since Just Ducky bought Molly’s just as the company was going to close down and take the trolleys to Florida.

Buying Molly’s “was just a really good move for both parties,” said Michael Cohen, co-owner of Just Ducky with Chris D’Addario, two Brookline, Mass., guys who moved here in 1997 to start Just Ducky with one amphibious “duck” boat.

They started with three trolleys in 2011, which has grown to six and will soon be seven to keep up with demand for tours, wedding transportation, party buses and other charter hires. That success has mirrored the growth of Just Ducky, which started with that one duck boat in 1997, grew to seven now, and will add an eighth soon for their land and river tours that operate only from spring till fall.

“They are both doing really well,” said Christina Robertson, manager for both the trolley and duck boat branches of the business for the last six years since Just Ducky bought the trolleys.

Though both are city tours, the more light-hearted duck boat tours, with their guides regularly inciting guests to go “Quack! Quack!” during the tour, are very different from the trolley, and not just because the trolley tours don’t go in the water.

“The duck boats are more the USA Today version of the city’s history, and the trolley tour is more like the New York Times,” Mr. Cohen said. “And there’s no quacking on the trolleys.”

But why is there so much growth in sightseeing business in Pittsburgh?

Turns out, the duck boat and trolley business acts as something of a barometer for all the good work and steady economic success that has gone on in Pittsburgh over the last two decades.

“The demand is definitely coming from the tourism in the city and from conventions and the work the city has done to make Pittsburgh a destination people want to visit now,” Ms. Robertson said. “There are more things to do Downtown. More people are coming Downtown to eat and go to the cultural district — which means we get a lot of locals, too, more than you would think.”

The tours’ reputation helps, and it convinced Downtown hotels like the Renaissance and Omni William Penn to recommend them to guests.

Mr. Cohen sites the ongoing success the last four or five years of all three professional sports teams and the out-of-town fans who have found Pittsburgh to be a destination to see their teams at an away game — the Pirates in particular.

“PNC Park is a big draw for teams [whose fans] travel,” he said. “Baseball is during duck boat season, so, baseball is a big part of that.”

“It’s really a combination of everything” that has boosted business, he said. “But, if I had to choose one thing, I’d say it’s the vibe of the city. So much positive is happening. The momentum is there and it is by no means slowing down.”

That was seen in the interests that brought the 30 people who were on the first trolley tour at 11 a.m. Saturday.

It was made up mostly of people from out-of-town, who were shown around the South Side, Oakland, Strip District, Downtown, North Side and Mount Washington on a two-hour tour by the veteran trolley team of driver Donald Mendoza and “narrator” Marlene Weisdack, who have been working together on such tours for 20 years.

Ms. Weisdack, who starts every tour by asking where everyone is from, said the makeup of the customers — young and old, men and women — was pretty typical.

“I’d been here before and I really liked it,” said Mary Godin, 24, a substitute teacher from York, Pa., who came on a day trip with her friend, Casey Swank, also 24.

“She had told me about how much she liked Pittsburgh, and I had to come see it,” Ms. Swank said.

The friends regularly trade day trip ideas and not too long ago traveled to Philadelphia on a similar jaunt.

“We did a hop-on-hop-off tour there. But this one was much better,” said Ms. Godin. “You get a lot more information.”

“And Pittsburgh seems so much cleaner and nicer” than Philadelphia, Ms. Swank added.