Hundreds of chambermaids, doormen and cocktail waiters have been flown to Davos to cater to every whim of world leaders, business executives and the super-rich who will descend next week on the Swiss Alps town for the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) celebration of capitalism.
While WEF guests, including Theresa May, Chinese leader Xi Jinping and South African president Jacob Zuma, will spend their nights in some of the world’s most luxurious hotel suites, the staff brought in to serve them will be sleeping up to five to a room in bunk beds.
The manager of the fanciest hotel in Davos – the Grandhotel Belvédère – said he had flown in 200 extra staff to work in shifts around the clock during the annual jamboree of the rich and powerful. “We normally have about 100 employees, but this week we have 300 to help us out,” Thomas Kleber, general manager of the Belvédère, said.
Kleber said the extra staff have been flown in from partner hotels across the world to help out during the Belvédère’s busiest week of the year, but because the whole of Davos is packed out with forum visitors there isn’t much space to accommodate the additional workers.
“We have a staff house, but at this time of the year it is getting cosy,” he explained. “We do have some different places with four or five people in one room. We have set up high beds with one sleeping on top and one underneath.”
Despite the contrasting sleeping arrangements, a key theme of this year’s conference will be rising inequality, which the WEF has warned is the biggest problem facing the world. The forum said the growing gap between rich and poor, which it said had helped trigger the UK’s Brexit vote and Donald Trump’s presidential victory, had led the west to “a tipping point and might now embark on a period of deglobalisation”.
The WEF has organised six sessions for Davos visitors to discuss inequality, including one entitled “Combating rising insecurity and inequality”, to be introduced by the WEF’s chief economist, Jennifer Blanke. Another session will explore rising inequality through a “visual exploration that reveals the causes and consequences of fragility in cities now and through time”.
The extra Belvédère staff include “specially recruited people just for mixing cocktails”, as well as baristas, cooks, waiters, doormen, chambermaids and receptionists.
The Belvédère is the focus of most Davos action, including top-level diplomatic meetings, the signing of billion-dollar business deals and, of course, the best parties. The WEF organisers have taken control of 85% of the hotel’s rooms to host world leaders, business people and celebrities, who this year include Grammy award-winner Shakira and Jamie Oliver.
Not even Kleber knows the identities of his guests due to security concerns, but he said in previous years that Bill Clinton, David Cameron, Ban Ki-moon and John Kerry stayed at the hotel. “There are always a lot of big famous people, big business bosses and state visitors,” he said.
The Belvédère will host more than 300 functions over five days, with the first executive coffee bar meetings starting at 6am and the last of the late-night parties not turning out until 3am. “We have all kinds of functions from breakfast meetings, politician lunches to nightcaps and cocktail receptions in every corner of the hotel. Every company and every single party has its own individual needs,” he said. “Ice sculptures are always part of it.”
Kleber declined to provide any details of what parties the hotel will be hosting this year, or how much the hotel charges for hosting events. Last year, a Silicon Valley tech company was reportedly charged £6,000 for a short meeting with the president of Estonia in a converted luggage room. The hotel has also previously flown in New England lobster, and provided special Mexican food for a company that was meeting a Mexican politician.
“I assume [the staff] get good tips,” Kleber said, but “most of them are not coming for the money – they are coming to be part of a once-in-a-year event … Of course it’s hard work, but it’s a lot of fun,” he added.
Theresa May will be the only G7 leader to attend this year’s summit, which clashes with Donald Trump’s inauguration as the 45th US president.
Downing Street refused to state which events or parties May plans to attend in her two-day Alpine sojourn. Last year, Cameron was photographed partying tie-less with Bono, Leonardo DiCaprio and Kevin Spacey, at a lavish party hosted by Jack Ma, the founder of internet group Alibaba and China’s richest man with a $34.5bn (£28.5bn) fortune. Tony Blair, who also attended the Ma party last year, is also a regular at the glitziest events.
Travelling to Davos and finding anywhere to stay next week is very expensive, but not nearly as costly as getting an all-access pass to the schmoozing. Basic membership of the WEF and an entry ticket costs 68,000 Swiss francs (£55,400), and that will only grant access to general sessions.
To get access to all areas, corporations must pay to become Strategic Partners of the WEF, costing SFr600,000, which allows a CEO to bring up to four colleagues, or flunkies, along with them. They must still pay SFr18,000 each for tickets. All Strategic Partners have been told that at least one of their invitees must be a woman.
Strategic Partners are given access to all private sessions, and a car and driver with a special sticker allowing door-to-door pickup. Just 100 companies are able to become Strategic Partners; among them this year are Barclays, BT, BP, Facebook, Google and HSBC. Companies have privately complained about the cost of the exclusive access, which helped the WEF bring in record revenue of SFr228m last year, according to its annual report.
The most exclusive invite in town is to an uber-glamorous party thrown jointly by Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska and British financier Nat Rothschild at the oligarch’s palatial chalet, a 15-minute chauffeur-driven car ride up the mountain from Davos. In previous years, Swiss police have reportedly been called to Deripaska’s home after complaints about the noise of his Cossack band.
A former assistant to economist Nouriel Roubini has described Deripaska’s parties as “endless streams of the finest champagne, vodka, and Russian caviar amidst dancing Cossacks and beautiful Russian models”. Sandra Navidi, who was Roubini’s director of research, recalled her trip to Deripaska’s party in her book Superhubs: How the Financial Elite and their Networks Rule our World.
Many of this year’s guests, who include outgoing US vice-president Joe Biden, China’s two richest men, and London mayor Sadiq Khan, will travel on private jets to nearby airports before transferring by helicopter to escape the traffic on the approach to the picturesque town. So many jets are expected that the Swiss government has opened up Dübendorf military airfield, an 85-mile helicopter flight away, to accommodate them.
Adam Twidell, chief executive of private jet booking service PrivateFly, said there were 1,700 private jet flights in and out of nearby airports last year, and he expected about 10% more this year.
The increase in private jet flights – which each burn as much fuel in one hour as typical use of a car does in a year – comes as the WEF warns that climate change is the second most important global concern. In its annual global risks report the WEF noted that environmental concerns were more prominent in the paper, drawn from 700 experts, than ever before.
Twidell said a last-minute flight to Davos from London on a small private jet would cost about £7,860. “Clients we have booked so far include business leaders, heads of state and government individuals,” he said. “[But] it’s not just pure politicians and business people who are wanting to be seen at Davos. The parties there have become a place to be. Davos is now on ‘the circuit’ along with the Superbowl, the Champions League final and the Monaco Grand Prix.”
The rich and powerful at Davos
Christine Lagarde
The managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a firm fixture at the WEF, and will participate in at least three panels at this year’s conference including “Squeezed and Angry: How to fix the middle-class crisis”, and another on how to “challenge stereotypes and institutional inertia to achieve gender parity within our lifetimes”, as well as being keynote speaker on the wider challenges facing the economy this year.
Lagarde, formerly a French minister, was recently found guilty of negligence in approving a massive payout of taxpayers’ money to controversial French businessman Bernard Tapie but avoided a jail sentence. The court decided she should not be punished and that the conviction would not constitute a criminal record. On Monday evening the IMF gave her its full support.
Theresa May
The UK prime minister will be at Davos for the first time this year. May is not listed to appear on any panels, and the No 10 press office declined to provide any details of May’s itinerary. David Cameron used his speech at Davos last year to reassure global business leaders that Britain would stay in the European Union. Cameron said he wanted to “confront this issue, I want to deal with it”. “My aim is absolutely clear: I want to secure the future of Britain in a reformed European Union,” he said.
Shakira
The Grammy award-winning Colombian singer-songwriter will be at Davos in her role as a global ambassador for Unicef. She follows in the footsteps of other celebrities, including Bono, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Will.i.am, who have spoken at Davos to promote their charitable interests. Shakira will be promoting her Pies Descalzos / Barefoot Foundation, which helps provide education to poor and vulnerable children.
Matt Damon
The Talented Mr Ripley and Good Will Hunting actor will be at Davos to talk about his continuing efforts to provide clean water to developing countries. Damon, who founded charity Water.org, will speak at a session hosted by CNBC. In 2014, Damon told Davos that having travelled in developing countries he “started to get a real appreciation for the magnitude of the water crisis”.
Xi Jinping
The Chinese president will lead an 80-strong delegation of business executives and billionaires to Davos. He is the first Chinese president to attend the WEF, and his visit is a statement of intent that China wants to assume a global leadership role as other world powers struggle with domestic tumult.
Joe Biden
The outgoing US vice-president will be at Davos, which runs until Friday – the same day as Donald Trump’s inauguration. Biden, who will travel to Switzerland on Air Force 2, will “deliver remarks on the cancer moonshot and deliver an address on foreign policy”, the White House said.
Sheryl Sandberg
The chief operating officer of Facebook, who has amassed a $1.3bn fortune from the social network according to Forbes, will speak at a panel about how older world leaders can harness the optimism of youth. The panel also includes: Meg Whitman, CEO of Hewlett Packard; Last King of Scotland actor Forest Whitaker, and Juan Manuel Santos, the president of Colombia.
Sir Martin Sorrell
Britain’s best-paid boss – who collected £70.5m from his advertising company WPP last year – will speak at a panel entitled “Size Matters: The Future of Big Business”. They will discuss how “fewer than 10% of the world’s public companies account for 80% of all profits. What does operating at this scale mean for competition, collaboration and innovation?”
Eric Schmidt
The chairman of Google’s parent company Alphabet is a regular at Davos, although he is not lined up to speak at any panels this year. Schmidt, 61, is the world’s 36th richest man with a $11bn fortune, according to Forbes.
Jack Ma
The founder of Chinese internet group Alibaba is China’s richest man with a $34.5bn fortune, according to the Bloomberg billionaires index. Last year he hosted a lavish party attended by David Cameron, Bono, Leonardo DiCaprio and Kevin Spacey.
Jamie Oliver
The British celebrity chef-turned businessman will be interviewed by Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington about “driving a healthy and sustainable food revolution”. Oliver, who is worth $400m according to the Sunday Times rich list, was recently forced to close six of his Italian restaurants after tough trading and the “pressures and unknowns” following the Brexit vote.
Khalid al-Falih
Saudia Arabia’s energy minister will be in demand as a key voice on Opec after the oil-producing countries recently agreed to cut output sending oil prices soaring. Al-Falih, who is also chairman of state oil and gas giant Saudi Aramco, has been put in charge of leading Saudi Arabia Vision 2030 – the country’s plan to diversify away from oil dependency.
