New York has eight and a half million people and it is the loneliest city in America to arrive in. Everyone who moves here learns the same thing in their first winter: density is not company. You can be surrounded by people every minute of the day and speak to nobody.
It is the largest market in the country for getting paid to be good company, and it is the one with the most people already looking for it.
Roavi is not a tour company and you are not a guide. People pay for your time -- dinner, a show, an afternoon, somebody to talk to. That trade has run in the United States for well over a decade.
The licence question, because New York is one of the few cities it applies in
Get this right and it is a selling point rather than a worry.
New York genuinely licenses sightseeing guides. The city's consumer protection department runs an exam and issues the licence, and it covers guiding as a trade -- taking people to points of interest and lecturing them about those places for money.
That is not what this is. You are not explaining the Brooklyn Bridge to anybody. You are having dinner with somebody who did not want to have dinner alone. Nobody has ever needed a permit for company, in New York or anywhere else.
If you want to run real tours, get the licence -- it is a genuine credential and this city has a lot of visitors. For everything below, there is nothing to obtain.
Who books an evening here
People who just moved. New York absorbs an enormous number of arrivals every year -- finance, media, tech, fashion, law -- most of them in their twenties and thirties, most of them knowing two people. They work long hours and the weekend is a problem they have not solved.
Students. NYU, Columbia, the New School, and a very large international contingent who arrive without a word of the city's social code.
People whose circle emptied out. Friends moved to New Jersey, had children, left for somewhere cheaper. Nothing went wrong; there is just nobody left to get a drink with on a Tuesday.
Somebody with an event. A work party, a gallery opening, a wedding. Arriving alone is the specific thing they are avoiding.
People who will not go alone. They want the restaurant, the show, the thing they read about. They will simply not do it by themselves.
What a booking actually is
Dinner somewhere they would not have found. A show, a comedy basement, a gig in Bushwick. Walking Prospect Park on a Sunday. Sitting in a bar for four hours because the person mostly needed to talk. A museum afternoon. Going to the thing they bought a ticket for and then realised they had nobody to go with.
Most of your clients live here. You are not showing them New York. You are the person they went with.
Be specific or be invisible
More people offer this in New York than anywhere else, and the ones who get booked are not the most impressive -- they are the most legible.
Say your borough. Say which nights you are actually free. Say what you are genuinely good at, whether that is a long dinner, a loud night out, a gallery day, or sitting quietly with somebody who is having a hard month. A vague profile in a city this size disappears.
Seasons
January and February are the busiest, for the obvious reason: it is dark, it is cold, and an empty weekend in a small apartment is long. September has an arrival wave as jobs and terms start.
Summer weekends thin out -- anyone who can leaves the city -- but weeknights stay strong.
Rates
$40-80 an hour, the top of the American range, and evenings go as a block rather than by the hour because nobody crosses this city for ninety minutes. You set the number and keep all of it: no commission, and Roavi never touches the payment.
"Renting a friend" in New York
That is the phrase most people type, and it comes from RentAFriend, which has run this exact model in the United States since the late 2000s -- fifteen years of paying people for their company without a regulator ever taking an interest, which answers the "is this a real thing" question better than anything we could claim about ourselves.
Same idea here. The difference is money: they charge you a listing fee before anybody books you, and Roavi charges you nothing and takes no commission. Side by side in RentAFriend vs Roavi.
New York is where that phrase gets typed most in the country, which is either encouraging or bleak depending on the day.
Getting started
A photo, a few sentences that sound like a person, your borough, your rate. Ten minutes and free to publish.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much can you earn in New York?
$40-80 an hour, the top of the American range. Evenings are almost always booked as a block of three or four hours rather than counted hourly, because nobody crosses this city for ninety minutes.Do I need New York's sightseeing guide licence?
No -- and this is worth getting right, because New York is one of the few US cities that licenses anything here. The DCWP sightseeing guide licence covers guiding: taking people to points of interest and lecturing them about it, as a trade. Being paid for your company is not that. You are not explaining the Brooklyn Bridge to somebody, you are going for dinner with them. If you intend to run actual tours, get the licence; for everything described here there is nothing to obtain.Who actually books it?
Overwhelmingly people who live here. New arrivals in finance, media, tech and fashion. Students at NYU and Columbia, many of them international. People whose friends all moved to the suburbs. Somebody with a work event who does not want to walk in alone. Visitors are the smaller share.Is New York oversupplied for this?
It has more people offering than any other city, and far more people looking. The density cuts both ways and demand here is not the constraint. What wins bookings is being specific -- your borough, your hours, the kind of evening you are actually good at.