VICTORIA — Harbour Air just launched a daily Victoria-Seattle route and is looking to work with travel advisors to help sell it and other new routes planned in the coming months.

British Columbia’s largest seaplane airline is also starting adding new Vancouver-Ucluelet and Vancouver-Campbell River routes to its growing network later this summer. Harbour Air, founded in 1982, flies to 15 destinations with 200 flights daily.

Harbour Air CEO Bert Van der Stege, who was on hand for the Victoria-Seattle inaugural flight Thursday, added the company is open to working with as many travel advisors as possible to help promote its new service.

“We’ve got a program in place working with travel trade or corporate management companies,” he said.

Harbour Air sales manager Kyle Gray said “bespoke deals” are available to travel advisors to help them better understand the product.

“If people are looking to sell our flights we want to get travel agents up to experience (the flights) themselves,” he said.

“VICTORIA AND SEATTLE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN NEIGHBOURS”

Asked what he would highlight about the Victoria-Seattle route to travel advisors, Gray said Harbour Air is the fastest way for people to travel between those two cities, and “it’s also a fun way to check out another west coast city in the northwest.”

The seaplane that will be flying between Victoria and Seattle is one of the larger airplanes in Harbour Air’s fleet and has room for 19 passengers.

Van der Stege said Harbour Air was able to launch the new cross-border route even though Canadian travel to the U.S., on the Vancouver-Seattle route, fell about 15% in 2025, as rising demand from American visitors to Canada in 2026 offset the decline.

He added that the decline in Canadians travellers followed Trump’s re-election, while the increase in American visitors to Canada is partly driven by the FIFA World Cup.

“Americans are very, very keen on coming to Canada. We are currently seeing an increase in demand….Some of that is FIFA related, but overall I think business is starting to improve again and there is tremendous demand again from a leisure and tourism perspective. We’ve doubled capacity this year,” he said.

Asked if the demand coming from the U.S. is why Harbour Air was able to expand service between the two cities Van der Stege answered “absolutely, otherwise we wouldn’t be adding capacity.”

He said the city of Victoria is now getting one flight a day to Seattle, and the twice daily flights between Vancouver and Seattle will continue.

“Obviously with FIFA starting today we believe that we can position Victoria as the city literally in between two cities that host games – Seattle and Vancouver – allowing Victoria to benefit from the increase in demand FIFA-related,” he said.

“Victoria and Seattle have always been neighbours, (with) one coastline, a shared way of life and deep ties in business and tourism. Our new flight today will offer more choice and make travel between these two cities easy. No more rides to airports, no lengthy security or immigration lines, no ferry waiting line.”

He added the Victoria-Seattle inauguration flight date wasn’t randomly chosen but happened on the day the FIFA World Cup started.

The Victoria-Seattle flights will take 30 minutes and have an introductory fare of $99.

In 2018 Harbour Air began offering flights between Vancouver and Seattle. It currently offers one flight in the early morning and another late at night which allows passengers to make a same day trip.

John Wilson, CEO of the Greater Victoria Chamber of Commerce, noted the expanded international air access will support business travel, trade and investment in the city, while Maranda Ji, from Destination Greater Victoria, said visitors from Washington are key to Victoria’s visitors’ tourism economy.

Harbour Air’s Travel Agents page can be found here.