About Us

The Niche Experience

Unforgettable Victoria and Vancouver Island Custom Designed Tours

A custom-tailored Niche tour allows you to explore our beautiful city and the surrounding area in a way that speaks specifically to your tastes and interests. When you’re our guest, we ask you, what are you passionate about? Maybe that’s Indigenous art and culture, so we might arrange for you to meet a local jeweller or carver and take a tour behind the scenes to see how each piece is brought to life, followed by a feast of traditional cuisine and exclusive accommodations at an Indigenous property.

Maybe you want to bathe in the forest, or sleep in a handcrafted Sitka Spruce spherical treehouse suspended in the Rainforest canopy. Maybe you want to tour our world class gardens or learn more about Canada’s only true Mediterranean climate. Every tour we create is fully customized, with even the smallest detail taken care of, which means you can expect high level experiences that you just won’t find anywhere else in the world.

As a true destination management company, we work with both travel advisors; and individual explorers, families, friends, and other small groups looking for on the ground travel experiences loaded with personal touches and access to places most people never get to see. Each itinerary is as unique as our guests and has been designed to fulfil their specific interests and travel goals.

What will yours look like?

Meet The Team

Cathy Scott

Chief Exploration Officer

I’ve travelled the world, and have helped our clients explore just about every corner of it. But Vancouver Island is a very special place. I founded Niche Travel so I could share the sights, tastes, and adventures of this beautiful place I call home.

Our specialty is creating authentic, personalized, small group tours that immerse you deeply into the landscape, culture, and history of Victoria and the Island. Our passion is in taking your tastes and interests, and then putting together the most incredible bespoke travel experiences that go far beyond what you imagined.

As with my sister companies, Departures Travel and Niche Women’s Tours, I’m constantly in creative mode, exploring new places and creating new ideas from my discoveries. Sometimes that means creating a new signature cocktail, crafted around my own hand made bitters using foraged local ingredients (don’t be surprised if you find yourself sipping my signature “Trees Knees” cocktail on your adventure with us!). Other times, it means using my connections within the travel industry and the community to take you behind the scenes, and along the path less traveled. As a 4th generation Victorian, I know this city and the island well. I also have the privilege of sitting on the marketing committees of two of North America’s most prestigious travel agency consortiums: Ensemble Travel Group and Virtuoso Travel. My 19 year background in sales, marketing and senior management also brings a unique perspective to the tours we create. I bring all of this experience together in every adventure we design. Niche Travel is my answer to the need for a destination management tour company in my hometown, catering to single or small group travelers thirsty for upscale boutique travel experiences.

Shari Lukens

Director Inbound Tours

I’ve always been a dreamer, and I’ve always loved to travel. You could say that aviation is in my blood; my mother was a flight attendant, and both my father and late husband were pilots. At a young age, I left my home in Alberta to train in competitive figure skating; and later trained and mentored skaters as a coach in Canada and Denmark.

Later, my career as a broadcast journalist took me across the country to write, produce, and voice documentaries. Eventually, I found my way to Vancouver Island as a sales manager with Telus, which allowed me to travel from one end of the island to the other. I fell in love with the incredible diversity and natural beauty of this fascinating piece of paradise.

I’m so excited to channel my professional expertise, my passion for travel, and my love of Vancouver Island into crafting unforgettable experiences here on this piece of paradise I call home. Whether you’re local to the Island, or visiting from far away, our lineup of fully-guided boutique tours will surprise and delight you with the endless variety of things you can experience here year round.

It’s no surprise that Condé Nast Traveller often features Vancouver Island as one of the top destinations in the world. From rich Indigenous culture and natural beauty that takes you from sea to sky, to a thriving local arts scene and farm-to-table culinary culture, our carefully curated tours take you deep into the nooks and crannies of our beautiful island. Along the way, we’ll create the kind of “Ah-ha!” moments that will fill you with memories to last a lifetime.

At Niche Travel, we’re known for creating small, boutique tours that allow our guests to experience something new. If you’re lucky enough to call Vancouver Island your home, let us show you your own backyard like you’ve never seen it before.

If this is your first time here, we can’t wait to show you just how precious and unique this island is.

At Niche Travel, we acknowledge that our presence is on the traditional land of the Lekwungen speaking peoples, recognized today as the Esquimalt and Songhees First Nations. We extends heartfelt gratitude to the Lkwungen People, also known as the Songhees and Esquimalt First Nations communities, for granting us the privilege to live, work, and play on their ancestral lands