Cultural attraction chief operating officer job description
A cultural attraction COO runs the site day to day: guest services, education, events, facilities, security and HR. The COO staffs each season to the attendance forecast. When weather turns or crowds build, the COO decides on closures, late openings and crowd limits to keep guests, staff and animals or collections safe.
By the HireBus team · Updated · Pay data: BLS, May 2025
Median pay, museums, zoos and gardens · BLS, May 2025
We're hiring a COO to run the site day to day. You oversee guest services, education, events, facilities, security, and HR, and you plan staffing around attendance. When the weather turns or a crowd builds, you make the call on closures and capacity so guests, staff, and [animals or collections] stay safe.
2. Essential Duties and Responsibilities
Lead guest services, education, events, facilities, security, and HR, and set each area's goals and budget.
Build the attendance forecast with marketing and finance, and staff each department to it by season.
Get the site ready for opening day and peak season: seasonal staff hired and trained, repairs done, supplies stocked.
Own the emergency plan and drills for severe weather, lost children, evacuation, and [animal escape or collection emergency] codes.
Decide on weather closures, delayed openings, and capacity limits, and get the word to staff, guests, and ticket holders.
Set capital project priorities with the CFO, and hold the Facilities Manager to each project's budget, schedule and guest safety plan.
Track injuries, guest complaints, and insurance claims, and fix what causes them.
3. Key Tasks / Daily Activities
Check the day's attendance forecast, weather, school groups, and events, and confirm staffing in each area.
Walk the site with the Facilities Manager to spot hazards, closed exhibits, and crowd problems.
Meet with managers about staffing gaps, broken equipment, complaints, or incidents.
Approve schedules, purchases, and overtime within department budgets.
Settle guest or staff issues that a manager could not resolve.
4. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Attendance against forecast: [your target].
Overall guest experience rating: [your target].
Seasonal positions filled before opening day: [your target].
Guest and staff injury incidents: [your target].
Operating spending against budget: [your target].
5. Required Qualifications and Skills
Bachelor's degree in [business, nonprofit management, hospitality, or a related field], or equivalent experience.
[7+] years managing operations at an attraction, park, venue, or hospitality business, including [3+] years leading managers.
Experience building budgets and staffing plans around seasonal attendance.
Has written emergency plans and run drills.
Makes clear decisions when weather, crowds, or incidents change the plan.
6. Preferred Experience
Has opened a new exhibit, building, or seasonal event to the public.
Has managed admissions and point-of-sale systems such as [your ticketing system].
Experience managing construction or renovation projects with outside contractors.
Knowledge of OSHA rules and workers' compensation claims.
7. Physical Requirements
Walk the full site, including outdoor paths, back-of-house areas, and stairs, several times a day.
Stay outdoors in heat, cold, and rain during events and weather calls.
With or without reasonable accommodation.
8. Work Environment and Schedule
Full-time, with weekends, holidays, and peak-season days on site.
On call for weather closures, alarms, and serious incidents.
Evening hours for rentals, member nights, and [holiday lights or other evening events].
9. Compensation and Benefits
Pay: [range and hourly or salary basis].
Additional pay: [overtime, bonus or incentive terms, or none].
Benefits: [health, dental, vision, retirement, paid time off, and when they start].
10. Company Culture and Overview
[Two or three sentences on what your company does, the area you serve, and the support a new chief operating officer gets in the first 90 days.]
11. How to Apply
[Apply link or email]. Our process: [phone interview, in-person interview, and next steps]. Contact [hiring contact] if you need an accommodation during the application process.
Need help filling this role? HireBus posts the ad, Iris interviews every applicant by phone before you do, and you decide who to hire. Start hiring now
What makes running a cultural attraction different
Operations chiefs everywhere staff shifts and fix what breaks. At a zoo, museum or garden, the COO also plans around live animals or fragile objects, big evening crowds, and building work that goes on while guests walk past.
Weather plans include the animals
A storm or a heat wave changes the day for animals as well as guests. Under USDA's animal handling rule, a licensed exhibitor has to act when heat, cold or storms threaten an animal's health. So the COO's closure plan gives keepers time to bring animals into holding while guests move to shelter. At a museum the same plan covers roof leaks over galleries; at a garden, trees after high winds. Source: 9 CFR 2.131: Handling of animals (Cornell LII).
Big evening events can bring fire code rules
Holiday lights, concerts and member nights pack more people onto the grounds than a normal day. Local fire codes can call for trained crowd managers or a written safety plan, and the head counts that trigger them differ from place to place. In Seattle, for example, an event where more than 500 people gather at once needs at least two trained crowd managers. Outdoor events under 1,000 people are exempt. Source: Seattle Fire Department: Public safety plans and crowd managers (CAM 5034).
Serious injuries start a reporting clock
If a work injury kills an employee, OSHA must hear about it within 8 hours. A worker's in-patient hospital stay, amputation or lost eye has a 24-hour limit. That covers a keeper hurt by an animal or a worker who falls from a lift. When the employer is a city or county, federal OSHA doesn't cover those public workers, but an approved state plan may. Source: 29 CFR 1904.39: Reporting fatalities, hospitalizations, amputations and losses of an eye (Cornell LII).
Construction happens around guests
New exhibits, roof jobs and path repairs often go on while the site is open. The COO and the Facilities Manager write a guest safety plan for each project. It fences off the work zone and sets detours that still work for wheelchairs and strollers. It keeps noisy work away from animals that startle easily, and it times deliveries to miss the morning school buses.
How much cultural attraction chief operating officers make
The closest BLS group for cultural attraction chief operating officers is chief executives. Chief executives who work for museums, zoos, gardens, and historic sites earned a median of $164,070 a year ($78.88 an hour) in May 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s below the $213,990 median for chief executives in all industries. About 850 of the 204,350 chief executives in that survey work for museums, zoos and gardens.
Paid a salary. Where there is a bonus, the CEO and COO agree the goals up front: attendance, guest scores and the operating budget.
Museums, zoos and gardens
$164,070$164,070 median Middle half $109,470–$280,000 10th–90th $84,990–$400,460
All industries
$213,990$213,990 median Middle half $129,540–$356,200 10th–90th $75,700–$507,730
10th–90th percentileMiddle halfMedianAnnual pay, May 2025. Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics.
Annual pay by percentile
Group
10th
25th
Median
75th
90th
Museums, zoos and gardens
$84,990
$109,470
$164,070
$280,000
$400,460
All industries
$75,700
$129,540
$213,990
$356,200
$507,730
BLS groups museums, zoos, botanical gardens and historic sites together. Post a real range for your market in the ad.
Skills to hire for, and what you can teach
Hire for these
Has run a seasonal operation: hired and trained a summer crew, then scaled it back in the fall
Has written an emergency plan, run drills on it, and fixed what the drills showed
Calls a closure or a crowd limit quickly and explains it plainly to staff and guests
Builds department budgets with each manager and holds the line on summer overtime
Leads managers from very different fields, from educators and keepers to security and maintenance
Teach these on the job
Your emergency codes and who can call each one
Your ticketing system's timed-entry and capacity settings
Which animal or collection areas are off limits to which staff, and why
The jobs volunteers can and can't do in your program
Your insurance carrier's steps for guest injury claims
The daily numbers come from the ticketing and point-of-sale system, such as Gateway's Galaxy, Tessitura, Altru or accesso, along with a scheduling app for hourly and seasonal staff and a work order system for facilities. On a weather day, two-way radios and a plain incident report form matter as much as any software.
Cultural attraction chief operating officer interview questions
They have their own page: 6 questions that test this job, what strong and weak answers sound like, and a work exercise to run with your finalists.
Start from last season's results. Adjust for a new exhibit or one that's closed, agree the numbers with the CEO, and look at them every Monday from opening day on.
Attendance against forecast
Daily gate count from the ticketing system against the day's forecast, with the weather noted. Review the misses each week to sharpen the next forecast and the staffing built on it.
Overall guest experience rating
The average score from a short survey emailed to ticket buyers and members after a visit. Sort the comments by area, such as parking, restrooms, food and lines, to see what to fix first.
Seasonal positions filled before opening day
Positions in the seasonal staffing plan with a hired and trained person on the schedule, counted the week before opening day. Track it by department so one short team doesn't hide in the total.
Guest and staff injury incidents
Every incident report, split into guests and staff and sorted by cause, such as falls, heat or animal contact. Compare months against attendance, and review each serious case with the manager involved.
Operating spending against budget
Monthly spending by department against the budget, from the CFO's report. Seasonal payroll and overtime often drive the misses, so watch them weekly in summer.
How is a COO's job different from the CEO's at a zoo or museum?
The CEO faces outward: the board, donors, officials and the press. The COO faces inward: staffing, guest service, facilities, safety and the daily budget. In a crisis the CEO speaks to the public while the COO runs the response on the ground. Some smaller sites skip the COO and split the work among department heads.
How much does a cultural attraction chief operating officer make?
Chief executives who work for museums, zoos, gardens, and historic sites earned a median of $164,070 a year ($78.88 an hour) in May 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The middle half earned between $109,470 and $280,000 a year. Pay also depends on your local market, experience and bonus terms.
How does the COO work with the curator and the veterinarian?
In this template the curator and the vet report to the CEO, not the COO. So the COO can't just order an exhibit open. Agree in writing which calls belong to animal or collection care, like moving an animal or closing an exhibit for its welfare. Then agree which belong to operations, like paths, crowds and weather. In peak season, meet every week.
What should a new COO do first?
Walk every route on the site, back-of-house included, with the Facilities Manager. Read last year's incident reports, insurance claims and guest complaints, and sit down with each manager about staffing gaps. Then run one drill before the busy season starts, so the first real emergency isn't the first time the new COO calls a code.
What emergency codes should a cultural attraction plan for?
Start with severe weather, fire, a medical emergency, a lost child, an evacuation and a threat of violence. A zoo or aquarium adds an animal escape, and a museum adds harm to the collection, such as a leak over a gallery. Each code needs a name staff use on the radio, a person who can call it, and a drill.
Does the COO oversee HR?
In the template, yes: the HR manager reports to the COO, who signs off on staffing plans and settles staff issues a manager couldn't. The CEO still hires the senior team. If your HR manager reports to the CEO instead, edit the first duty before you post the job.
