Central Functions
Head of operations
Role Summary
The Lead Skipper is an extra role given to an experienced skipper. Alongside skippering their own yacht, the Lead Skipper is a steady point of contact for a defined group of fellow skippers across the route, answering questions, sharing route knowledge, and helping newer or less experienced skippers settle into the week.
It is a support and coordination role. Each Skipper remains the sole captain in command of their own yacht.
OPERATIONS COORDINATOR
1. Role Summary
As an Operations Coordinator (OC) you are the right hand of the Head of Operations (HOO). You operate across destinations, making sure each route’s Event Manager (EM) has what they need to deliver, and making sure they actually deliver it. All management, guidance and support that flows from central operations into the EMs flows through you, acting on the HOO’s behalf.
In one sentence: the HOO sets the operations strategy; you make it happen across destinations through the EMs.
Reporting & Working Relationships
- Reports to: Head of Operations (HOO).
- Acts on behalf of: HOO when supporting and managing EMs.
- Manages: Staff Coordinator (HR for seasonal staff).
- Supports: Event Managers across all active destinations.
- Liaises with: YW Commercial Team (crew lists, yacht supplier issues), venue and supplier partners, YW App Dev Team for app and dashboard work, Quarterdeck (QD) on cross-destination skipper/host supply matters via the RMs and HMs.
Role Ownership Across the Team
- Operations Coordinator (OC) — cross-destination operations; supplies pre-week intelligence and budget envelope to each EM.
- Event Manager (EM) — on-the-ground route lead; owns the event, the team, and the budget.
- Guest Experience Manager (GEM) — owns the guest experience, guest relationships, and complaint handling.
- Event Coordinator (EC) — owns the YW App schedule, app comms and message updates; on-site POC for Media and DJ teams.
- Route Manager (RM) — owns route operations and skipper-team coordination; supplied by Quarterdeck (QD).
- Host Manager (HM) — owns host-team coordination and onboard guest experience; supplied by Quarterdeck (QD).
- Route Medic — assigned skipper or host with medical credentials; provides route-level medical response and health & safety support.
- Quarterdeck (QD) is Yacht Week's external service provider for the Skipper and Host crews (including RM, HM, and the Route Medic). YW is the customer; QD supplies the people. Skipper/host-side performance, offboarding, and replacement decisions sit with QD.
The Delegation Chain
You sit between the HOO and the EMs. The HOO sets the strategy; you operationalize it across destinations. The EMs run their own routes, but you set the standard, monitor delivery, and remove blockers.
- HOO sets operational priorities, budget envelopes, and standards for the season.
- OC translates these into per-destination guidance and EM mandates.
- OC briefs each EM pre-week with everything they need: guest dashboard, budget envelope, partner contacts, crew list confirmations, top risks.
- EMs deliver on the mandate; OC monitors centrally via KPIs (response times, NPS, partner feedback) and a steady comms cadence.
- Where EMs need support, coaching, or a fast decision, OC handles it directly. Escalates to HOO only when needed.
Operate with EM trust as the default. The thinner the team, the faster mandates need to flow. Push decisions down to the EMs with clear authority; pull them back up only when the data says otherwise.
Authority & Mandate
- Sole owner of EM-mandate authority on the HOO's behalf: setting priorities, budget envelopes, and pre-week standards.
- Approves budget overruns within HOO-delegated authority; escalates above that threshold.
- Owns the cross-destination supplier escalation channel into the YW Commercial Team and (via RM/HM) into Quarterdeck (QD).
- Approves Acting EM material commitments when the EM is unavailable: refunds, boat changes, partial credits, partner-name-public messaging, budget commitments. The acting EM (GEM) escalates to OC for the green-light.
- Owns the operational WhatsApp Community for the active routes — sets up the per-team / per-function groups (event team, skipper team, host team, OC↔EM, OC↔HOO, etc.) and is the admin for the community.
- Vendor / venue incident escalation channel: receives EM reports of route-level vendor confrontations, logs in the Event Incident Log, briefs HOO, and (with HOO) handles any vendor follow-up beyond the route.
2. Core Responsibilities
Your week breaks into five core responsibility areas. Every duty you perform should map back to one of these.
2.1 EM Performance & Delivery
- Monitor each EM's delivery against weekly KPIs: guest NPS, complaint resolution time, app response time (and email where applicable), partner feedback.
- Run a steady comms cadence with EMs: daily light-touch check-in, weekly structured review.
- Coach EMs on delivery gaps; intervene early when patterns appear across routes.
- Make sure EMs are doing what's needed. Follow up. Don't let things slide.
- Weekly cross-destination incident review: read every Event Incident Log entry; flag cross-route patterns to HOO and EMs by Tuesday. Sexual-harassment patterns from 2024 repeated in 2025. Catch patterns and push fixes upstream.
- Translate cross-destination patterns back to the HOO so the season-level picture stays current.
2.2 Budget Management for EMs
- Own the weekly EM budget envelope for each route, with continuous updates rather than end-of-week surprises.
- EM budget covers: F&B for the crew yacht, fuel, marina costs, costs in attending to guests, other transport and logistics.
- Approve overruns within delegated authority; escalate to HOO above that threshold.
- Track spend across destinations; flag cost themes and outliers to the HOO.
- Provide each EM with a clear current-spend view so they're never guessing where they stand.
2.3 Staff Operations (via Staff Coordinator)
- Manage the Staff Coordinator, the HR manager for people hired for the season.
- Make sure people arrive when they should and leave when they should.
- Make sure onboarding happens, contracts are signed, and arrival and prep instructions are sent and acknowledged.
- Cover dropouts and last-minute changes through the Staff Coordinator; align with the relevant EM and (for skippers/hosts) with Quarterdeck (QD) via the RM/HM.
- Hold the bar on the new-staff experience: first-week crew should land prepared, contracted, and clear on expectations.
2.4 Venue, Supplier & Crew List Coordination
- Support the HOO on venue and supplier contacts; maintain the source-of-truth contact list across destinations.
- Ensure all crew lists are filed correctly by the YW Commercial Team for each yacht and route, in time for embarkation.
- Liaise with the YW Commercial Team when yacht specs, deliveries, or service from the yachting company create issues for EMs and RMs.
- Venue contract clauses for 2026 (with HOO sign-off): plastic cups at every dance-floor venue, venue-contracted security and VIP wristband enforcement, branding installed and tested before event time. Three guest cuts on broken glass in 2025 should be the last.
- Yacht supplier escalation: formal weekly report to the YW Commercial Team on damages, late check-ins, wrong specs, and cash-demand incidents. The OC owns the channel; EMs and RMs surface, OC escalates.
- Keep partner contacts current so EMs are never chasing a stale phone number when something goes sideways.
2.5 Brand & Standards
- Yacht Week brand voice: warm, confident, energetic, never defensive. Professional, reliable, respectful. No jargon, no internal acronyms.
- Wear official Yacht Week merchandise during operational hours.
- Hold the line on Code of Excellence (COE) compliance.
- Zero tolerance on sexual harassment, drugs, and serious alcohol incidents. Same-day documentation. Sexual harassment was the top recurring incident category in both 2024 and 2025.
- Reinforce sustainable onboard and on-land practices aligned with Company values.
- Lead by example.
- Hold the standard for team spirit across destinations.
- Maintain a steady comms schedule with EMs so they always know where they stand.
- Enforce a team of trust: mandates given to EMs are real mandates. Pull decisions back only when data says otherwise.
- Sexual harassment incident dashboard with target zero. Trend reported to HOO weekly. Any incident triggers a same-week post-mortem with the relevant EM, RM and HM.
3. Pre Event Preparations
Pre Event prep at the OC level is multi-destination. Five workstreams run in parallel for each route active that week.
3.1 Guest Profile Dashboard
- Build the per-yacht and fleet-level dashboard for each destination, working from booking data, the YW App, customer service notes, and prior-week handover.
- Country and age split, returning guests, music preferences, prior YW issues, open CS tickets, group dynamics, dietary, medical and accessibility flags.
- Anaphylaxis and severe allergies as red-priority flags. OC audits dashboard completeness on this dimension before delivery; the 2025 Greek pasta-with-nuts incident is the case study.
- Deliver to each EM (and by extension to the route team) before Saturday morning briefing.
Future state: the OC works with the HOO and YW App Dev Team to set up a per-week Metabase dashboard so this is one click away per route.
3.2 Yacht-by-Yacht Communication Plan
At OC level the plan is set across destinations: standards, channels, response-time targets, and brand voice are aligned so each EM’s per-yacht plan starts from the same baseline.
- Confirm per-route comms standards: channels, response-time targets, brand voice expectations.
- Make sure each EM has a per-yacht communication plan ready before guests arrive.
- Surface comms issues from last week (response-time gaps, message volume spikes, brand drift) to the relevant EM with proposed fixes.
3.3 Previous Week's KPIs & Feedback
- Read the full KPI report from every active destination.
- Identify cross-destination trends and recurring themes.
- Brief the HOO on the top three season-level risks and the action you've taken on each.
- Feed destination-specific insights into each EM's pre-week briefing.
3.4 EM Briefing Pack
One pack per EM, per week. The OC’s most important deliverable.
- Guest profile dashboard for the route.
- Budget envelope, current spend baseline, and any budget themes from last week.
- Partner and venue contact list (current).
- Crew list confirmation from the YW Commercial Team.
- Prior-week mitigations and top three risks for this week.
- Any HOO-mandated priorities or changes.
Delivered no later than Friday so the EM can brief their own team Saturday morning.
3.5 Staff & Crew Coordination
- Confirm with the Staff Coordinator that all incoming staff have arrived (or have a confirmed arrival plan), with contracts signed and prep instructions acknowledged.
- Confirm with the YW Commercial Team that all crew lists are filed correctly for the week's yachts.
- Surface staffing gaps early to the relevant EM and to the HOO; coordinate replacements through the Staff Coordinator (YW staff) or via Quarterdeck (QD) for skippers/hosts.
- Confirm RM/HM first-week onboarding plans are in place for any newly arriving skippers or hosts.
4. Weekly Schedule (Saturday → Friday)
Yacht Week runs Saturday to Friday. The schedule below is the principle, not a stopwatch — exact venues and timings vary per week and per destination. The rhythm itself doesn’t. The week breaks into four blocks: Pre-Arrival, Saturday (arrival), Sunday → Thursday (sailing days), and Friday (final day). Information moves outward from the EM via the EC’s app pushes; skippers and hosts run their own ~8-10 person crew on each yacht; the route team stays strategic, not herding. The single biggest success factor is that skippers and hosts are well-informed at all times — the daily app push and the RM/HM broadcasts to their teams are how that happens.
4.1 Pre-Arrival (Wed → Fri before week begins)
Pre-Arrival is the three days before guests embark. Each role’s Section 3 workstreams land during this window.
Day | Activity | OC Responsibilities | Wed | Pre-week intelligence pull | Build the per-yacht and fleet-level dashboard for each active destination from booking data, the YW App, customer service notes, and prior-week handover.
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|---|---|---|
Thu | KPIs & cross-destination patterns | Read every active route’s KPI report end-to-end; identify cross-destination themes; brief the Head of Operations (HOO). |
Fri | EM Briefing Pack delivery | Deliver one pack per active EM no later than Friday: dashboard, budget envelope, partner contacts, crew list confirmations, prior-week mitigations, top three risks. |
4.2 Saturday: Arrival Day
Saturday is the heaviest day of the week for most route roles. Marina check-in opens around mid-afternoon and runs through early evening; the welcome dinner / opening party closes the day.
Time block | Activity | OC Responsibilities | Morning | Staff & crew confirmation | Confirm with the Staff Coordinator that incoming staff have arrived (or have a confirmed plan) with contracts signed; confirm the YW Commercial Team has filed all crew lists for the week’s yachts.
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|---|---|---|
Marina check-in window | Light-touch EM check-in | Light check-in with each EM after their team briefing; remove blockers from a distance; surface anything material to the HOO same-day. |
Evening | Hand off to the EM
| The EM owns the route from here. OC steps back; remains on-call for material decisions, refunds above EM authority, or cross-destination supplier issues.
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4.3 Sunday → Thursday: Sailing Days
Sunday through Thursday share a common rhythm: crew yacht repositions early, morning event-crew meeting around 09:30, the daily app push at 10:00, sail / event prep through midday, venue set-up in the afternoon, the day’s guest-facing event in the evening, and a ‘tomorrow’s schedule’ post on the event team WhatsApp group before the team winds down.
Time block | Activity | OC Responsibilities | Daily morning | Per-EM check-in | Light-touch check-in with each EM via the agreed cadence channel; coach on delivery gaps; intervene early when patterns appear across routes. |
|---|---|---|
Tuesday | Cross-destination incident review | Read every Event Incident Log entry across active routes; flag cross-route patterns to the HOO and EMs by Tuesday end-of-day. Sexual-harassment patterns from 2024 repeated in 2025 — catch patterns and push fixes upstream.
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Mid-week | Budget pulse | Continuous EM budget tracking across routes; approve overruns within delegated authority; escalate above that threshold to the HOO.
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Daily | Supplier escalation channel | Route yacht / supplier issues from RM/HM (relayed via EM) into a formal weekly report to the YW Commercial Team.
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4.4 Friday: Final Day, Feedback & Departures
Friday is the closing day: sail back to the home marina, the crew yacht week-review meeting, boat-hopping farewells across the fleet, and end-of-week closeout (kitty, commissions, damages, comp report, KPI capture).
Time block | Activity | OC Responsibilities | Morning | Live KPI capture | Read incoming KPI reports as each route closes the week; pull cross-destination themes. |
|---|---|---|
Afternoon | Patterns & HOO catch-up | Brief the HOO on the top three season-level risks and the action you’ve taken on each; document supplier scoring updates.
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Evening | Next-week prep starts | Begin assembling next week’s EM Briefing Packs; confirm new-staff arrival plans with the Staff Coordinator. |
5. Complaint & Incident Handling
Every guest complaint and operational incident follows the same flow: Listen → Acknowledge → Assess severity → Route → Act → Close → Log. Severity decides authority; authority decides who acts and who escalates. The role-with-the-relationship holds the guest POC through resolution; the role with operational ownership runs the fix behind the scenes. All Med+ incidents are documented in the Event Incident Log within the same operational day.
5.1 Principles
- Listen first. Acknowledge before defending. Repeat the issue back in your own words.
- Severity-led: classify before acting. When in doubt, escalate one level higher.
- Single guest POC: whoever first held the guest relationship keeps it through resolution. The operational fix routes to the right role behind the scenes.
- Speed over perfection on Med+ incidents. Same-day Event Incident Log entry is non-negotiable for: sexual harassment, drugs, drunk-on-duty, glass injury, anaphylaxis, vendor confrontation pushed onto crew, vessel emergency, lone-host situation, social-media-bound complaint.
- Critical incidents are owned by the Head of Operations (HOO). The HOO leads or stays connected to the response, supported by OC, EM, Route Medic, and any other relevant staff. The route team's job during a Critical is to deliver facts, hold guest comms locally where directed, and execute on the HOO's call.
- Confidentiality is the default. Medical details are held in line with company policy and applicable data-protection rules. Staff misconduct details are shared only with those who need to know to act (EM, RM/HM, Quarterdeck (QD) as relevant), not across the team.
- External / public communication during a Critical incident routes through the HOO. Route roles do not speak to media, social platforms, or families on behalf of Yacht Week without HOO sign-off.
5.2 Severity & Response
Use this matrix to decide whether you handle an issue alone, loop in another role, the EM, or escalate beyond the route. When in doubt, escalate one level higher.
Severity | Examples | Action | Low | Schedule confusion, dietary tweak, lost item, minor venue gripe. | Resolve in role on the spot, ideally via skipper/host. Log at end of day.
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|---|---|---|
Medium | Repeat complaint, partner-venue conflict, missed transfer, group dissatisfaction with one event, minor conduct flag. | Resolve in role; notify EM same-day. If skipper/host involved → route operational fix to RM/HM. Log immediately in the Event Incident Log. |
High | Safety incident, medical issue, refund request, conduct incident, social-media-bound complaint, repeated skipper/host failure. | Stop. Notify EM immediately. RM/HM looped if crew-related; Route Medic looped if medical. EM may escalate to OC; OC briefs HOO. The role-with-the-relationship stays with the guest. Same-day Event Incident Log entry. |
Critical | Injury, missing person, criminal incident, vessel emergency, anaphylaxis, regulatory issue. | Safety protocols first. HOO owns the response, supported by OC, EM, Route Medic, and any other relevant staff. Emergency services as required. All external comms route through HOO. Document everything in the Event Incident Log within the hour. |
5.3 Chain of Command
The route team resolves what it can in scope; everything else escalates along these lines.
- Within the route team: GEM, EC, and Route Medic surface to EM. EM is the route-level decision point for refunds, boat changes, partial credits, schedule changes, and partner-facing commitments.
- Crew-related issues: skipper-side route through RM; host-side route through HM. RM and HM document conduct or performance issues same-day with EM and Quarterdeck (QD).
- Medical issues: surface to the Route Medic via direct app contact. The nearest skipper or host is first responder and calls the Medic. The Medic treats within scope, stabilises, and arranges escalation to local medical services where exceeded.
- Yacht / supplier issues: RM relays via the EM into the OC, who reports formally to the YW Commercial Team weekly.
- Cross-destination patterns: OC reads every Event Incident Log entry across active routes weekly and surfaces themes to the HOO.
- Critical incidents: HOO leads. OC, EM, Route Medic, and any other relevant staff connect into the response. External comms route through HOO.
5.4 Operations Coordinator Responsibilities
OC does not run front-line complaint handling. OC reads patterns across destinations, owns the supplier and vendor escalation channel, approves Acting EM material commitments, and connects the HOO into Critical responses.
- Cross-destination Event Incident Log review weekly: read every entry across active routes; flag patterns to HOO and EMs.
- Supplier scoring: collate yacht / venue / equipment / transport supplier issues across routes; formal weekly report to the YW Commercial Team.
- Harassment incident dashboard with target zero. Trend reported to HOO weekly. Same-week post-mortem with the relevant EM, RM, and HM on any incident.
- Approve EM budget overruns within HOO-delegated authority for incident recovery; escalate above that threshold.
- Acting EM approver: when the EM is unavailable for more than two hours, GEM acts as EM. Material commitments (refunds, boat changes, partial credits, partner-name-public, budget commitments) require OC approval before GEM acts.
- Vendor / venue incident hub: receive EM reports of route-level vendor confrontations, log in the Event Incident Log, brief HOO. With HOO, handle any vendor follow-up beyond the route.
- During Critical: connect into HOO's response. Relay facts between HOO and the route. Coordinate cross-destination implications.
6. KPIs & Feedback Analysis
Performance is reviewed continuously, weekly with the EM, and at the end of the season. Feedback is also a live operational input, not just a retrospective scoreboard. When a theme surfaces, it triggers action — to the route plan, to logistics, to music, to skipper or host behaviour, to venue or partner conversations, or to yacht-company escalations. The faster a theme is recognised and routed, the smaller the fix. The KPI scorecard itself (metrics, targets, thresholds) is being defined separately and will land in a future revision.
- Read every active route's KPI report end-to-end weekly. Identify cross-destination trends and recurring complaint themes.
- Brief the HOO on the top three season-level risks weekly, with the action you've taken on each.
- Any pattern recurring across two or more routes triggers a same-week post-mortem with the relevant EMs, RMs, and HMs.
- Yacht-company / venue / equipment / transport supplier issues collated into the formal weekly report to the YW Commercial Team.
- Sexual-harassment incident dashboard with target zero. Trend reported to HOO weekly.
- Equipment-failure capture from EM event recaps drives supplier scoring updates.
Staff Coordinator
Role Summary
The Lead Skipper is an extra role given to an experienced skipper. Alongside skippering their own yacht, the Lead Skipper is a steady point of contact for a defined group of fellow skippers across the route, answering questions, sharing route knowledge, and helping newer or less experienced skippers settle into the week.
It is a support and coordination role. Each Skipper remains the sole captain in command of their own yacht.