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There are 1,400 working charter brokers in the world, according to MYBA's 2025 member count. Maybe 200 of them are worth a charter client's time. The other 1,200 are catalog readers: they forward the same MYBA inventory sheet you can pull yourself, they take 15 percent commission for the introduction, and they disappear on day 4 of the charter when the captain says the chef has the flu and the brief was for an anchor dinner at Cala di Volpe.
This guide names the 9 questions that filter the working brokers from the catalog readers. None of them is difficult. The first conversation should answer 7 of the 9.
How charter brokers are paid
Before the questions, the structure. Skip this if you already know it.
The standard MYBA charter has two brokers in the chain. The central agent represents the yacht's owner and holds the exclusive listing rights. The retail broker represents the charter client. They split the 15 percent commission, typically 7.5 percent each, paid out of the base charter fee. The client pays the broker nothing extra.
Many of the bigger firms (Burgess, Edmiston, Y.CO, Camper and Nicholsons, Northrop and Johnson, Ocean Independence, Fraser, Cecil Wright) operate as both central agent and retail broker, internally separated. When you charter a yacht through one of these firms, the firm is often on both sides of the table, with the commission staying in-house.
This is not inherently a problem. But it means the firm has dual incentives: representing the client well to win repeat business, and representing the owner well to keep the exclusive listing. The questions below test where the firm's actual loyalty sits when those interests conflict.
Question 1: Are you a MYBA member, and which committee do you sit on?
MYBA membership is public. Check it before the first call (https://www.myba-association.com). A non-member can still be excellent (some of the best charter retail in the Caribbean operates outside MYBA), but membership confirms minimum competence, a complaint mechanism, and adherence to the MYBA charter contract standards.
The committee question is the tell. A broker who serves on the MYBA charter agreement committee, the central agents' committee, or the regional committees is read in the industry. The catalog readers never sit on committees. They do not have the time or the standing.
Question 2: How are you paid on this charter?
The clean answer: 15 percent commission on the base fee, split with the central agent, paid by the owner. Nothing else.
The yellow-flag answers: "We charge an additional retainer." "We charge a finder's fee." "We charge a planning fee." All three are increasingly common at the smaller boutique end of the market. None is dishonest. All three mean you are paying more than the standard structure.
The red-flag answer: "We earn a kickback from the captain on certain provisioning vendors." This is not legal under MYBA. If a broker volunteers it, the broker is admitting to participating in a kickback chain that comes out of your APA at the end of the trip.
Question 3: Who is the central agent on this yacht?
The retail broker should know. If they do not know, they have not done their homework on the yacht and are pitching from a public inventory feed. Move on.
If they do know, ask whether the central agent is in their own firm or a competitor. If it is a competitor, ask whether the retail broker has worked with that central agent before. The relationship between retail broker and central agent is the operational glue of a charter. A retail broker who has never worked with the central agent is starting cold on your trip.
Question 4: When did you last visit this yacht?
A working broker visits 40 to 80 yachts a year, mostly at the Monaco Yacht Show in September and the Antigua Charter Yacht Show in December. They have walked the engine room. They know whether the captain is on their fourth season or their first. They have eaten what the chef cooks.
A catalog reader has visited the yacht zero times and is pitching it on photos. If the answer is "we have not personally visited this yacht but our central agent has," that is honest, but it is a different transaction. Decide whether you want to be the broker's first run at this yacht.
Question 5: Who is the captain and how long have they been on board?
A captain on a yacht 11 months is looking for the next position. A captain on a yacht 4 years is settled. A captain on a yacht 8 years either owns part of the operation or has nowhere else to go. All three exist. All three behave differently on charter.
The first two are the bands that work best. Settled captains run a tight ship and know the destination. Newer captains are still proving themselves and tend to over-deliver. Long-stay captains can sometimes feel proprietary about the yacht in ways that subtly inconvenience the charter client.
A good broker volunteers this without being asked. A catalog reader has to look it up.
Question 6: Name three yachts you would not put me on in the same destination at the same date.
The most useful question on this list. A working broker has opinions. They have seen which yachts ran into problems last summer, which captains lost crew at the end of the season, which builders' refits did not hold up. They will name three. They will tell you why. They may name a yacht you had already shortlisted, which is uncomfortable, but that is the conversation you wanted.
A catalog reader will say "every yacht in our inventory is excellent" or "we would not recommend something we did not believe in." That is the answer that ends the relationship.
Question 7: What does your post-trip support look like?
The broker's value is most visible on day 4 of the charter, when something has gone wrong. The chef quit in port. The chief stew got into an argument with the lead guest's spouse. The weather forced a marina overnight that doubled the dock fee.
Ask the broker, before you sign, what their availability is during the charter window. The good answer: "Three of us cover your booking, the lead is me, the deputies are X and Y, we are reachable 24 hours during your charter window, and we have direct lines to the central agent and the captain." The bad answer: "Email me anytime."
The other half of post-trip support is the APA reconciliation 30 days after the trip. A working broker reviews the reconciliation line by line before forwarding it. A catalog reader forwards it untouched. The difference shows up in your refund.
Question 8: Have you ever had a charter go fundamentally wrong, and what did you do?
A 20-year charter broker has had multiple charters go fundamentally wrong. Yachts have engine room fires. Captains have medical emergencies mid-trip. Charter clients have arrived to find the yacht in a port 200 nautical miles from where they were due to board because of a permit issue.
A broker who claims they have never had a charter go wrong is either lying or has had a small career. The right answer is a story. Listen to the structure of the story. Was the broker on a plane to the destination? Did they have a backup yacht in mind? Did they push the central agent for compensation? Did they get the client a partial credit on a future charter?
This is the question that separates the working brokers most clearly.
Question 9: Will you put your last three first-time charter clients on a 20-minute call with me?
The asymmetry of the charter market is that the brokers know everyone and the clients know no one. A working broker has a roster of clients who will speak on their behalf. A catalog reader has nobody.
This is the closing question, and the one that produces the most polite refusals. Some brokers will not share clients out of a sense of confidentiality, which is reasonable but inconvenient. The right counter is to ask for a written testimonial from a recent client, or for the broker to introduce you to a captain they work with regularly who can speak to the broker's behavior on charter.
If the broker can produce none of the above, you have your answer.
Red flags in the first conversation
Some signals require no questions to surface.
The pitch deck arrives within an hour of first inquiry. Either the broker is automated (some of the larger firms use a CRM that sends the deck before a human has looked at the inquiry), or the broker has 200 inquiries open and yours is being routed by a bot. Both reduce the personalization of what comes next.
The broker shows you only yachts the firm is the central agent on. The central agent is incentivized to fill the calendar; the retail broker is incentivized to find the right yacht. If your retail broker only ever shows you in-house yachts, the wall between the two roles is not real at that firm.
The broker pushes a single yacht in the first call. Working brokers shortlist 3 to 5 candidates in the first round, get feedback, refine, and present a final 2. A single-yacht pitch in the first call is either the broker is over-selling a slot they need to fill, or they have decided what you want before listening.
The broker is unwilling to share the central agent's contact. Sometimes there is a reason (the broker's relationship is fragile, the central agent has been difficult). Most of the time the broker just does not want you to talk to anyone else. A working broker is fine with you talking to the central agent directly.
Retail boutique versus the big four
The four largest charter retail firms (Burgess, Edmiston, Y.CO, Camper and Nicholsons) cover roughly 60 percent of charter inventory between them. They have the deepest catalogs, the best central agent relationships, the most operational scale. They are also the firms most likely to put you with a junior broker on your first booking unless the trip is above 800,000 dollars base fee.
The retail boutiques (firms with 5 to 30 brokers, often specialized by region) compete on personalization and captain relationships. They cannot always match the big four on inventory breadth, but they often match or beat them on captain-specific intelligence.
The right answer for most clients is one boutique broker and one of the big four, in parallel, for the first inquiry. The two will pitch different yachts. Compare. Pick. The losing firm gets a polite no for this trip and remains a relationship for the next.
We cover the firms in detail on the brokers index, with individual reviews of Burgess, Edmiston, and Y.CO.
FAQ
Do I pay the charter broker directly? No. The broker is paid out of the base charter fee, typically 15 percent commission, split between the retail broker and the central agent.
What is the difference between a retail charter broker and a central agent? A retail broker represents the charter client. A central agent represents the yacht's owner and holds exclusive listing rights.
How many charter brokers should I contact? Two or three. Beyond that, the same yachts get pitched multiple times.
Does the broker change based on whether I use one big firm or a smaller one? Yes. Big firms have deeper inventory. Smaller brokers often have stronger captain relationships.
Can a broker change a yacht's charter rate? No. The rate is set by the central agent on behalf of the owner.
What if I am unhappy with my broker mid-charter? Raise it with the central agent first. The retail broker can be replaced for the next charter, but mid-trip the central agent is the operational counterpart.