Where he works
Corporate entertainment in Davos
Davos is not a city with a corporate calendar. It is a small alpine town that hosts one week a year, during which every chalet, hotel suite and restaurant becomes a hospitality venue and nothing is available at short notice.
The week
Everything happens outside the Congress Centre
The official programme is not where a performer belongs and is not what anyone books. The week is filled by the private layer around it: house dinners, partner receptions, delegation hospitality, and the fifteen-person chalet evening a company runs once a year.
Those evenings are short, tightly scheduled, and impossible to be late for. That suits a format with no get-in, no sound check and no equipment.
Why the format fits the week
Three constraints Davos puts on everyone
There is no space
Hospitality rooms that week are converted restaurants and chalet living rooms. Nothing has a stage and nothing has a load-in. He needs a patch of floor.
There is no slack in the schedule
Guests arrive from a session and leave for another. A set that starts at half past eight and finishes at ten past nine is normal, and close-up absorbs that without visibly shortening.
There is no accommodation
This is the real planning issue. Beds in Davos that week are booked a year out and priced accordingly. Expect his accommodation in a neighbouring valley, and that line in the quote to be larger than usual and stated openly.
Booking it
Ask in the spring, not in December
For January, the sensible window to ask is the previous spring or early summer. By November the interesting evenings are placed and the accommodation is gone.
Outside the January week, Davos is a ski town and a conference venue like any other, and a booking there is priced like any other Swiss booking.
Practical
- Season
- One week in January. The rest of the year is an ordinary alpine booking
- Typical size
- Twelve to sixty guests, in private hospitality
- Format
- Close-up and mentalism. Stage sets do not fit the venues
- Lead time
- Six to nine months for the January week
- Accommodation
- Often outside Davos itself. Quoted at cost and flagged early
- Language
- Performed in English
Questions worth asking before you book
Can he get a badge for the Congress Centre?
No, and he does not need one. Everything he is booked for happens in private venues around the town, which is where the evenings that matter to your guest list happen anyway.
Can he do two evenings in one night?
During Davos week, often yes: the venues are within walking distance and the sets are short. Two hospitality rooms in one evening is a common shape and it changes the quote in your favour.
What if our event moves at the last minute?
It will. Schedules that week move constantly. As long as he is in the valley the flexibility is his to give, which is one argument for booking the accommodation properly rather than tightly.
From the floor
Rooms on the same circuit
A cross-section of the venues this work runs in. Not staged for the camera, and not lit for it either.
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Black tie, and the middle left open -
Arm's length, no table -
At the table, leaning in -
Set for dinner, nobody in yet -
Dubai, during the reception -
A gala hall, seen from the back
Ask early
For January, ask in spring. Send the dates you are holding and roughly how many guests, and the accommodation question is answered before it becomes a problem.
Most enquiries are answered the same day.