“They are like robots," says Jessica, speaking about the guests at the four hotel restaurants she managed during the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos. “When you meet them, they are not natural. Their eyes are black. It’s creepy.”
While world leaders gathered again in the less and less snowy Swiss alps and onlookers debated whether this species of the elite really qualifies as a ‘world leader’ anymore. The globalisation glitterati, it is claimed, have lost touch with the experiences, needs and opinions of everyday people they serve creating a vacuum for new global powers to barge their way in. So, while I was in Davos, I spent my time speaking to the people who serve these global leaders during WEF: the bartenders, hotel managers, restaurant supervisors and piano bar pianists.
Barry, from Barry’s Piano Bar, has been entertaining ‘white badges’ (the coveted status symbol of WEF invitees) since 1993. Back then, the number of delegates with white badges was little more than one thousand. The year before Barry’s first WEF gig, ‘white badge’ Nelson Mandela met then South African President F. W. de Clerk. The year after, in 1994, Israeli Foreign Minister, Shimon Peres, and Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation drafted an agreement on Gaza and Jericho. Now, the forum has closer to three and a half thousand white badges: by invitation or purchased for CHF 27,000 a pop.
It’s not just the number of badges that have more than doubled in that time, so have Barry’s earnings. One downbeat evening, when Barry’s WEF enthusiasm had been knocked by a “nasty cookie” hotel manager, Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare (who had previously invited Barry to play at his wedding) asked Barry to quit the hotel and play exclusively at Cloudflare’s space down the road. Seeing Barry was unsure if it was risky to give up a secure annual gig, Matthew offered to double what he earned in January for just five nights at WEF. Needless to say, Barry’s Piano Bar was born.
With higher earnings, come higher prices. One bartender commented on Saturday night - two days before the forum begins - “lucky you didn’t come tomorrow! The prices will be doubled.” When we asked why, the answer was simple: “the bar will be full whatever we charge”. And why not? Jessica tells me how during WEF “money doesn’t seem to count”. One of her guests simply paid for a table of 100 people, then stood up and left without even eating.
This new practice is not popular with everyone, though. Tobias - who came to Davos for a season over twenty years ago, fell in love, never left, and now manages the Hotel Seehof - is quick to point out that he does not change his prices. While WEF makes one month’s profit in a week, he had his most profitable year during COVID without WEF because his costs were lower. Instead, Tobias focuses his attention on clients that come back each year; people who don’t expect to pay premiums at the fifty events Tobias hosts for one week. At a five-star hotel, prices are already high enough.
For Ian, the pianist who replaced Barry at the bar in Hotel Europe, WEF is also about the people. That’s why he keeps coming back to Davos and feels at home there. “Everyone is open… It’s like speed dating for business” he recalls one friend’s account. People's perspective on WEF, it seems, depends on whether they’re welcomed onto the dating conveyor belt or not. And, as Jack - a bartender from Greece on his first season in Davos - points out, “if you don’t have money, then you’re going to do what you're told”. That includes service staff like him keeping clear of the conveyor belt.
Really, then, the money does count. “We have so many problems in the world. If all this money really does exist, it would be so easy to fix all the problems. So, they just don’t want to do it,” says Jack. He sees the sharing economy as a clever solution for so much wealth being extracted by the few where everything left has to be ‘shared’ by the people: “share a scooter, share a car, share your house… Slowly, slowly they take it. It is all about the finances”. Afterall, it’s money and the access it gets (like CHF 27,000 for a special badge) that divides the two perspectives and experiences of WEF most. “The world is burning, the poor are getting poorer, and the rich are getting richer”, reflects Jessica.
For Jessica and Jack, their favourite thing about WEF is a sense of achievement in making it through 19-hour days with little rest or food or the sense of camaraderie when their team succeeds. For Ian and Barry, it is Peter Gabriel, Bono or the Dalai Lama coming to hear him play. For Tobias, it is the connection and trust he has with repeat guests at his hotel.
Which leads us to one of the great WEF themes of recent years, Rebuilding Trust. Barry trades in keeping people’s trust in the safety to let loose in his bar. He therefore neglects to comment on topics like trust or the planet; topics that are for the leaders at the forum. “I just play piano”, he says. I note a sense of pride in his voice. He is truly dedicated to creating an escape from the woes of the world for global leaders, even when not behind the keys. For Ian, the forum itself is a solution for trust. It is about people meeting to create new ideas together. At the same time, he reflects on how the corporate commercialisation of WEF over the years has happened in tandem with declining trust in society.
Tobias also notes how trust has declined over time. “In the 1980s and 90s, people could trust that life would be better in the future”. But now he feels trust has been falling since the 2008 crash. “Real wages have decreased. People cannot afford homes… People are thinking, for God’s sake, what’s next!” He ponders if globalisation, the very ideal WEF stands for, went too far. Perhaps we’re better operating in regions and local communities. “It doesn’t make sense for some people to have so much money. What can one person do with $2 billion?”. There has to be a way for economic growth to not only improve the welfare of the few, but the majority too, he reflects.
Jessica laughs at the theme of trust. “The themes are always the same… This is just a small town where big people meet to talk about things in theory”. While Jack feels more positive about the Trump presidency than Biden’s because it will be better for his crypto side-investments, he too still has trust issues: “I don’t know what these leaders’ real intentions are.” But he maintains hope that most leaders really do want to “help humanity grow and advance as a species”.
Another theme we explored that seems to have melted down the WEF agenda is climate and nature. Can the planet be safeguarded when those purporting to safeguard it fly to meet in the mountains on private jets? Ian believes so. He acknowledges the emission of an air of contraction but highlights the level of security and time scarcity for the world leaders WEF attracts.
For Tobias, safeguarding the planet is also about ‘glocalisation’ and supply chains. He isn’t so phased by a few thousand business leaders gathering in the mountains on private jets either; discerningly pointing out that far more people than attend WEF fly in and out of Zurich Airport every day. But, these business leaders, he believes, must stop extracting the cheapest labour wherever it is on the planet and pay more to localise their supply chains to support communities and reduce transport and freight emissions.
Jessica laughs at the irony of it all. “They do everything that is the opposite of what they are meeting to talk about”. Much of WEF is on one long promenade through the alpine town where every shop front, restaurant, or hotel is taken over by a corporation or country printing slogans about the future of the world on temporary façades. “They write things on the walls but that is not why they are here,” says Jessica. “In the end, it is about making connections and talking about how to manipulate the upcoming year for their gain”. She laments how, come Friday, all the plywood branded façades, extra furniture, or plants and decoration is discarded. Now, there is even a pop-up shop that sells the waste or gives it away to locals for free. Tobias also shares his irritation at how it can take weeks for the locals to tidy up the mess, negatively impacting tourism after the event.
When I asked Jack the official WEF question about safeguarding the planet - How can we catalyse energy, climate and nature action through innovative partnerships, increased financing and the deployment of frontier technologies? - he astutely helped rephrase it: “how can we grow, but basically, don’t ‘f’ up the planet?”. For him, renewable energy powering AI, blockchain and robotics could provide the answer; a true advocate for what the forum labels ‘The Intelligent Age’.
So, are the global leaders at WEF robots? Of course, Jessica’s sci-fi comparison to robots is only about how she feels in her guests’ presence. The divide between their experience of the world is that great a crevasse. But, as Ian reflects, “in global trends there is a shift toward people dividing but we see the same thing throughout history, we just need to make sure we find peaceful solutions”. Jack’s parting hope is that the intentions of the WEF process “is real and not a fugazi”. And all he can do from where he stands behind the bar is hope. We cannot know what we don’t experience. If over time, everyday people don’t feel the impact of the good intentions of world leaders, then on what basis can they trust them?
In ‘in group, out group’ psychology, there is a tendency to perceive members of a group we are not in as if they are all the same as each other. But all groups are made up of individuals with their own unique perspectives and intentions. “There is always the good and always the bad. We live in a polarised world; everything exists at the same time”, finishes Jack. WEF itself can feel like a contradiction. It is at once the most obnoxious place and the most inspiring. Both the good and bad exist in all places and groups, WEF included. This is an insight as old as writing. But somehow in the times we live, it is so easily forgotten.