Is This the Best Job of All Time? Probably.

The Maldives will be one of dozens of destinations visited by Jauntaroo’s ‘chief world explorer’.

Help wanted: An "enthusiastic" traveler to fly around the globe for a year, all expenses paid, earning $100,000 in salary for blogging about it – and for volunteering to leave each destination “a little better than when you found it.” That’s how Tom Wilson, chief commercial officer of Jauntaroo, a two-year-old ‘vacation matchmaker’ website, sums up the company’s search for a Chief World Explorer whose mission will be to circle the world and share images, videos, and other content via the site and through social media channels. Aspirants need only to log on to Jauntaroo.com and post a 60-second video of themselves stating why they think they’ll succeed; the deadline is September 15.
From the initial pool of applicants, 50 semi-finalists will be selected and asked to submit a second video; the winning candidate will be plucked from a list of five finalists. Wilson, whose travel background includes a stint at JetBlue Airways, says the project was initially inspired by the example of Queensland, which in 2009 launched a Best Job in the World contest—as an island caretaker in the Great Barrier Reef—that drew so many applicants its website crashed. Wilson says the difference here is that the successful applicant will be constantly on the move—expected to visit between 30 and 50 destinations during the 52 weeks—and that each visit will include a voluntourism activity, developed either by the destination or Jauntaroo with partner charities. (Jauntaroo already donates $1 for each booking made through its site to nonprofit organizations.) Wilson says the itinerary will be a mix of domestic and international places, such as Berlin, the Maldives, and, closer to home, Calistoga and Fort-Worth, but that the focus will be “ on finding those places that are off the beaten path; those hidden gems that not everyone knows about.”