Entertainment Coordinator

The job is logistics with a smile. Before guests arrive you read the preference sheet, talk to the charter broker or the owner's office and build a day-by-day plan. That means booking restaurants ashore, sourcing musicians, ordering decorations and costumes, arranging helicopter transfers and checking the deck team can launch the toys where you want them. Once guests are aboard you run the plan, change it when the weather or the mood shifts, and keep every department informed through the chief stew and the captain.

With guests aboard the hours are long and the plan changes constantly. A family charter in the Bahamas needs treasure hunts, snorkelling trips and movie nights on the sundeck. A birthday party off Saint-Tropez needs a DJ, lighting, a dress code and a tight schedule for the galley. Between trips the work drops to supplier research, stock checks on party kit, photo albums for the owner and helping the interior. On smaller yachts this role is usually folded into the chief stew's job.

Owners and management companies hire from three pools: experienced stewards who have shown a talent for events, hotel and cruise ship entertainment staff, and private event planners. Yachts want proof you have delivered large events under pressure, a strong contact book in the Med and Caribbean, and the interior basics, because you will help with service on quiet days. Languages help, French, Italian and Russian especially, as does a holiday rep or kids' club background on family-heavy charter yachts.

Few yachts carry a dedicated entertainment coordinator, so the step up usually leads sideways. Good coordinators move into VIP guest relations, head of service or interior manager roles on the largest yachts, where guest experience is the whole brief. Others go ashore into charter management or brokerage, where knowing what makes a charter week memorable is a selling point. Some go freelance and are flown in for specific trips by owners who know them.