I missed Davos – even though it sounded a bit like Riyadh

I didn’t make it to Davos this year. Not for lack of invitation or inclination, but for the more prosaic reason that I simply couldn’t justify the cost.

It must have been the well-publicised presence of Donald Trump – a one-man stress-test for the globalised community represented at Davos – that pulled the crowds in record numbers and pushed prices to frankly absurd levels.

When I finally tracked down what looked like a viable option – a modest room in a chalet in Davosdorf, some distance from the main strip – I did the currency conversion and discovered that it would cost a shade more per night than a stay at the Burj Al Arab. That settled the matter.

Still, I missed it. No amount of livestreams or social-media clips quite compensates for those crisp, sunlit Alpine mornings, or the moment the shuttle drops into the valley after a hard day and Klosters appears ahead, twinkling under a blanket of snow. Davos has its clichés, but they exist for a reason.

I’ve written before how it is like a week-long return to university days – mind-expanding intellectual interaction during the day, fun networking at night. 

I also missed the sheer density of the Gulf delegations, present this year in numbers that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. In other parts of the world, Davos is dismissed as a gathering of a detached global elite – the so-called “masters of the universe” spouting hot air in a cold climate.

But that is precisely why the snow-starved inhabitants of Dubai, Doha, Abu Dhabi and Riyadh love it. The annual trek up the Magic Mountain has become a pilgrimage for power brokers and policymakers in the Gulf.

There is something irresistibly symbolic about flying from the Gulf’s desert glare to a place where the temperature, the pace and the scenery enforce a different kind of focus. Davos, for Gulf visitors, is not an escape from power-policymaking so much as an alternative theatre for it.

Which is why the question now being quietly debated – whether the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting might eventually move elsewhere – is more consequential than it sounds. Dublin, Detroit and even Dubai itself are said to be under consideration as the Alpine town outgrows, and outprices, its event.

I can see the advantages of each. Dublin would certainly offer fierce après-ski hospitality, without the hazards of skiing. Detroit would underline a narrative of industrial renewal – though with a huge shift from the event’s European roots. Dubai, of course, knows how to host global conferences at scale and already hosts successful annual WEF events. 

Yet, in one sense, Davos has already come to the Gulf. The Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh is still routinely dubbed “Davos in the Desert” – though the organisers say they don’t like that moniker.

It has evolved from a novelty in 2017 into a fixture of the global calendar. It no longer feels like a regional challenger, but a parallel forum with its own gravitational pull.

What struck me this year, watching from afar, is how much the Swiss event drew from the desert version in tone and substance.

• Foreign banks descend upon Saudi Arabia’s new landscape
• Mubadala sets focus on robotics and AI
• Whopping results from a tiddler of a trip to India

Larry Fink, co-chair of the WEF and also a central figure at FII, borrowed heavily from the Riyadh narrative – prosperity, long-term capital and the stabilising role of investment in a fragmenting world. 

Organisers of the Riyadh event pointed out to me that imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, even as they considered the finer points of copyright rules.

Fink told the FT he wanted to “re-establish the WEF as a place for conversation” but this was soon revealed as a forlorn ambition – with insults, walk-outs and confrontation, the Trump delegation dragged Davos down to its own level. You don’t get that in Riyadh.

Would a change of venue help? If Davos were ever to lose its Alpine setting – its snow, isolation and Magic Mountain experience – would it still be Davos? Or would it simply become another very large, very expensive conference but in a well-connected city with adequate transportation links and affordable hotels?

For Gulf participants, the mountains matter. They confer distance – from daily politics, from regional heat, from the immediacy of decision-making. Strip that away, and something intangible but important goes with it.

Perhaps that is why, despite the costs and the congestion, Davos has so far endured. And why, when we don’t quite make it there, we find ourselves missing it.

Frank Kane is Editor-at-Large of AGBI and an award-winning business journalist. He acts as a consultant to the Ministry of Energy of Saudi Arabia