The remote positioning of Davos helps with securing the safety of 2 500 VVIP participants at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting. But it also requires quite a commitment. In this background report, BizNews.com’s Alec Hogg explains how it took 12 hours door to door from London – and how he found some rather irritated hoteliers when he got to the highest town in Europe. AH
ALEC HOGG: Well, here we are. Monday, the 19th of January…we’re in Davos. I’m back for the 12th time and as you can see, it hasn’t gotten any warmer. If you look behind us here, you’ll see something called Top Alliance (for the second year in a row). These are the guys who actually, hire limousines out to the executives of the class who come to Davos. They book out a building over the road for the whole year, just to use it for the next week. We’ve already been hearing from hoteliers here in Davos, how unhappy they are at what happened last week when the Swiss revalued their currency, broke the cap with the Euro, and now they’re worried (they’re in this Alpine village) that the usual tourism trade is going to be going off to Austria in the near future.
Well, that’s the background. As far as the World Economic Forum is concerned, we’ve gone though. We’ve managed to get our badges tonight. That’s always, quite a mission because tomorrow morning, they start blocking off big parts of the town. The skiers shared the buses with us today. They won’t be around tomorrow because the hotel rates go through the roof when the WEF’ers (I guess that’s us) arrive in town. This year’s World Economic Forum is promising to be one of the very best ever. We have a lot to expect from the President of the Ukraine. I’ll be in a couple of sessions – listening to him – in small groups and then there are all kinds of issues as far as the Euro is concerned. Remember, Angela Merkel was quote a little while ago as saying that she didn’t really mind if the Greeks left. Then she had to revert that. Well, if the Greeks do leave (and it looks like they will), then the Euro might be getting itself into a different situation.
Of course, the United States will have the Americans here. They’re a lot more confident than they’ve been for a while and the South Africans are here, led by President Jacob Zuma.
I’m Alec Hogg from Biznews, in Davos.
