By April the winter people are asking the same question: what now? For a lot of them the answer is the Mediterranean, and within that the two roles that come up most often are villa host and beach club front-of-house. They're both sun, sea and a private-guest standard. They are not the same job.
Villa host
You are the chalet host's summer cousin. One property, one family or party at a time, a week or two each. You'll do breakfast and a light lunch, keep the house immaculate, arrange boats and restaurants and the occasional emergency dentist, and you'll be the person the guests text at 11pm because the pool light is flashing. The good villa companies pair you with a chef; the smaller ones expect you to be one.
It suits people who like a household rhythm, who can be discreet in someone else's home, and who'd rather know six guests well than serve two hundred. Accommodation is usually on site or nearby, and the days have a shape: busy mornings, dead afternoons, evenings on call.
Beach club
You are in hospitality proper. A big terrace, a long service, hundreds of covers, music, a bar that runs until the small hours. Standards are high — these are places where a sunbed costs what a hotel room does — but it's a team sport, with managers, shifts and days off that are actually off.
It suits people who love the pace of a restaurant, who want their evenings to end in a bar with thirty colleagues, and who'd rather be in Ibiza or Mykonos town than up a hill in a villa. Pay is hourly or monthly plus tips, and the tips in the good clubs are serious.
Villa hosting is a relationship. A beach club is a performance. Pick the one you'd enjoy at 6pm on a Saturday in August.
The practicalities they share
- Both recruit January to March for May starts.
- Both increasingly want a second language — French for the Riviera, Spanish for the Balearics, Greek is a bonus in Greece and never expected.
- Both need a right-to-work plan for British passport holders. The big villa operators sort permits; beach clubs often expect you to arrive with one.
- Both are a superb route into winter chalet management, because you'll have run a property or a service on your own.