Ask what a week on a superyacht costs and you will get a number. Ask what that number actually buys, and the conversation becomes more interesting — because the yacht charter market has a structure that first-time charterers almost never see, and the difference between a good week and a disappointing one usually traces back to it.
The contract behind almost every charter
The crewed charter market runs, overwhelmingly, on one document: the MYBA Charter Agreement, developed by the Mediterranean Yacht Brokers Association and now the worldwide standard for crewed luxury charter. Its central principle surprises people: the base charter fee covers the yacht and crew only. The boat, the people who run it, and their professional service — that is the product.
Everything else is paid separately, through a mechanism called the Advance Provisioning Allowance. The APA is a float, paid before boarding, that the captain draws on for fuel, food, drinks, berthing, and the running expenses of your particular itinerary. It typically runs 20–25% of the charter fee on sailing yachts and 30–40% on motor yachts — the difference being, mostly, fuel. The captain accounts for it transparently, and any unspent balance comes back to you. VAT, where applicable, is charged on the base fee rather than the APA.
What an agency actually does
The charter agency — the retail face of the MYBA world — earns its commission from the yacht’s side of the transaction, and its craft is genuine. A good charter agent knows which boats photograph better than they sail, which crews are exceptional and which are merely adequate, which owners keep their vessels immaculate and which have deferred a refit too long. They negotiate terms, manage the contract and the escrow, and act as your advocate if the week goes wrong.
That knowledge is the product, and the strongest houses — the established international brokerages and the serious independent specialists — deliver it well. The limitation is scope, not quality: the agency’s mandate ends, more or less, at the passerelle. The flights that get you to the boat, the villa nights either side, the restaurant in Bonifacio on the one evening you dine ashore, the arrangements for a guest who needs privacy handled carefully — these sit outside the charter contract, and outside most agencies’ remit.
What a coordinator does instead
The coordinator — destination manager, private travel office, family-office travel desk, the label varies — takes the opposite starting point: the trip is the product, and the yacht is its centrepiece. A coordinator will typically work with a charter agency or the central agent on the vessel itself, then build everything around it as a single plan: positioning flights and helicopter transfers timed to embarkation, the pre-charter villa, provisioning preferences passed to the crew in advance, shore arrangements at each stop, and — for guests who need it — security and privacy arrangements handled by licensed professionals rather than improvised locally. Firms such as Algoz work this way, treating the charter week as one coordinated operation rather than a series of bookings.
The trade-off is directness: a coordinator adds a layer, and layers have to earn their place. For a straightforward week — one family, a known itinerary, no complications — a good agency and a good captain need no help. The coordinator earns its place when the week is actually complicated: multiple guest movements, high-profile passengers, an itinerary crossing jurisdictions, or a principal whose time genuinely cannot absorb the administrative load.
| Charter agency | Coordinator | |
|---|---|---|
| The product | The yacht — vessel, crew, contract | The trip — the yacht plus everything around it |
| Core skill | Which boats and crews are genuinely excellent | Timing every moving part into one plan |
| Scope ends | At the passerelle | At your front door, both ends |
| Best for | A simple, single-family week | Complex weeks: multiple movements, high profile, cross-jurisdiction |
The money flow, step by step
Because the MYBA structure surprises first-timers, it is worth walking the payments in order. On signing, a deposit — customarily half the charter fee — secures the booking, held under the contract’s stakeholder arrangements rather than paid straight to the owner. The balance of the fee, together with the APA and any taxes, typically falls due in the weeks before boarding, so that the captain begins your charter with the float in hand and the provisioning already done against your preference sheets. During the week, the captain keeps running accounts against the APA; at the end, you see the reconciliation — receipts, balances, the lot — and any surplus is returned, or any genuine overrun settled.
Two further lines belong in the honest budget. Gratuity for the crew is discretionary but customary, commonly discussed in the range of five to fifteen per cent of the base fee depending on region and service, and it is worth deciding your approach before the last morning rather than during it. And delivery or repositioning fees can apply when a yacht must travel to meet your preferred embarkation point — a negotiable line, and one a good agent will surface early rather than late.
The questions that reveal quality — on either route
Whichever structure you choose, the same few questions separate professionals from passengers. Ask how the APA is estimated for your itinerary, not a generic one — fuel between Naples and the Aeolians is not fuel around Ibiza. Ask who holds your money and under what escrow terms; MYBA structures this properly, and deviation from it deserves scrutiny. Ask to see the crew list and the captain’s tenure — a great boat with a new crew is a different product from the same boat after three seasons together. And ask what happens when something breaks, because the measure of any charter professional is not the brochure week but the recovered one.
When each route makes sense
For a first charter, or a simple one: a reputable MYBA agency, a well-chosen boat, and trust in the captain will produce an excellent week. For a milestone trip with moving parts — a significant birthday afloat, guests arriving from three continents, a recognisable name aboard — the coordinated route repays its layer many times over, because the failures that ruin charter weeks almost never happen on the water. They happen in the gaps between bookings that nobody owned.
One final calibration on timing, because it changes what both routes can do for you. The Mediterranean’s July and August are the charter world’s compressed peak: the sought-after yachts with the settled crews are committed six to twelve months ahead, and the late buyer chooses from what remains rather than what is right. June and September, by contrast, offer the same sea with warmer negotiating temperatures and cooler harbours — and the Caribbean winter season runs on its own calendar entirely, with the Antigua and BVI fleets at their best from December through April. The earlier you commit, the more the structural choice — agency, coordinator, or both — actually matters, because early commitment is when the good inventory and the good planning are both still available.
The discerning answer, as usual, is not a brand of provider but a clarity about what you are buying: the boat, or the week. Price the whole week honestly — fee, APA, tax, and everything ashore — and then decide who you trust to own it.