Touring Tigertown

Mimi Omiecinski, founder of Princeton Tour Company, is a self-proclaimed “Princeton wannabe.”

“I’m not a historian, and I didn’t grow up in Princeton, and I don’t have an Ivy League education, but I love to gush about Princeton,” she said.

The Princeton Tour Company had humble beginnings as a little-known “one-woman show,” Omiecinski explained. She launched her company in 2006 after moving to Princeton. Two years later, it has expanded to offer 36 different tours of the Princeton area and campus, including traditional walking tours, bike tours, pub crawls, “grub crawls” and “doggie day” adventures.

Before settling in Princeton, Omiecinski traveled the world with her husband for seven years as a “full-time tourist.” When they had the chance to choose any New Jersey town for their new home, she originally expected to live close to her husband’s office. But she was convinced otherwise after spending a long weekend in Princeton.

“I called him [my husband] and I said, ‘I know where we’re going to live,’ “ Omiecinski said. “I’ve seen a lot of the world and I can say without any hesitation, there is no place on earth like Princeton.”

Once she and her husband moved in, Omiecinski noticed that Princeton had no tour company, and despite her lack of experience, she decided to start one.

“As a tour junkie abroad, I felt like I knew the components that could make it successful,” she said.

The company’s tours range from reviews of pubs and historic battles to surveys of campus architecture and the “shameless namedropping” of local geniuses and their homes, she explained. Popular seasonal specials include ghost walks through the Princeton Cemetery, a Pi Day dedicated to Albert Einstein’s birthday and an “April 1st Fibbers Tour.” The company also leads birthday party tours with scavenger hunts for children and wine tours for adults.

“We see ourselves as more of an entertainment tour than historical,” Omiecinski said. “All of our tours are historically accurate, but we meld in folklore and fable. We think that makes everybody feel like a bona fide local.”

Though the Princeton Tour Company and the University Orange Key tours sometimes overlap in the areas of campus they cover, Omiecinski said she feels that her company fulfills a different niche.

While Orange Key tours target prospective students, Omiecinski said her company focuses more on people “who might just ask the question, How did Princeton pull off an incredible Ivy League education along with a surrounding neighborhood community that’s so safe, vibrant and culturally stimulating? We think that’s what we answer.”

Orange Key president Mark Gray ’11 also said that he believes the two tours serve different purposes. “The impression I’ve got is I think they focus more on history,” he said, noting that in the “meat of [an Orange Key] tour you’re talking to students about academics and what it is to be a student here.”

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But Omiecinski also draws inspiration from the University. She tries to model the style of her tours after history professor Paul Miles’ lectures in HIS 380: The United States and World Affairs, a course she audited. At the end of each tour, there is “a bravo, TMZ historical fact that would make anybody be a little bit charmed,” she explained. Her favorite “zinger” is the story of Moses Taylor Pyne, Class of 1877, who tried to spread the orange-and-black spirit by importing packs of red and black squirrels and setting them loose on campus. Though the red ones have died off, descendants of Pyne’s black squirrels still remain today.

Tour groups include people of “all walks of life,” from international corporate groups to the Garden Club of America to University students and their families, Omiecinski said, adding that word of the tours began to spread around campus after the Nassoons went on a bike tour with the company.

Connor Diemand-Yauman ’10, a member of the Nassoons who went on multiple tours, said, “I’m a bit annoyed that I didn’t discover Mimi’s tour company until I was a junior. Before then, I had no idea the town was so rich with history.”

Omiecinski said she realizes undergraduates have limited free time for touring, so “the market with the students I think is if they want to lose their parents for two hours when they visit, and have their parents gush about the fact that they got into Princeton.”

As the tour company attracts larger audiences, Omiecinski has hired 12 full-time tour guides. This Halloween, she anticipates sending off five fully booked tours each hour, a sharp increase from last year, when there was no demand for Halloween tours.

In its short tenure, the Princeton Tour Company has already received high praise from national media, including The New York Times and The Washington Post. TripAdvisor.com rated it the top attraction in Princeton, better than the University.

Nadia Prodanov, who is from Bulgaria, went on a tour as a team-building activity with her employer, Innophos, a chemical supply company.

“I had been to Princeton before, but now I see it with different eyes,” she said after the tour.

In addition to running the company, Omiecinski maintains a daily blog, “Princeton WannaBe,” that is peppered with Princeton trivia. In a recent post, she wrote about how Woodrow Wilson, Class of 1879, forced Princeton students to choose between having hard liquor and cars on campus when he served as president of the University.

Several people have already offered to buy the company, but Omiecinski said she does not plan on selling. She said she enjoys the flexibility of being a small business owner and hopes to be around for a while.

“I’m not really looking to make this a huge thing. I just want to give great tours for people who want to tour Princeton ... This is what I want to do with my time,” she said.