Yacht chartering is the practice of renting, or chartering, a sailboat or motor yacht and travelling to various coastal or island destinations. This is usually a vacation activity, but it also can be a corporate event. There are two main kinds of charter: bareboat and crewed. Bareboat charters involve a person renting a boat and skippering it themselves. Most bareboat companies also offer courses to teach basic seamanship and prepare people for bareboat chartering. These companies also sometimes provide skippered charters, meaning that boat comes with a skipper but no additional crew.

Crewed charter means the yacht comes with a crew. This can be anything from a 35-foot boat with a husband-and-wife team serving as captain and chef to a 300-foot boat with a squad of 30 or more crew members including stewardesses, engineers, mates, deckhands, scuba dive masters, and the like.

Several factors determine the cost of a charter, including the size of the yacht, its age, its pedigree, the number of crew, and the destination. The worldwide range of charter prices (per person per week) is estimated to from $1000 up to and in excess of $25,000.