Why a Davos apartment suddenly costs a fortune in January.
During Forum week, Davos is not operating like a normal hotel market. Demand spikes. Stays are concentrated around the week. Central properties disappear first.
A perfectly ordinary apartment can suddenly have a very extraordinary price.
Location is the first premium. Availability is the second. Timing is the third.
We don't publish private owner prices without permission. But we can help you understand what is where, what is available, and whether the location and offer make sense before you commit.
Why prices jump
Roughly the same amount of accommodation exists in Davos every January. What changes is demand: for one week, thousands of extra people need a bed within walking distance of one building. Supply doesn't expand to meet that — the town doesn't grow — so the properties that are actually convenient get bid up, and everything else gets compared against them.
What "expensive" actually means
"Expensive" isn't one number — it's a combination of how close a property is, how much of the week it covers, and how early it was secured. The same apartment can carry a very different price depending on whether it was booked in June or in December, which is most of why comparing two Forum-week quotes without those details attached tells you very little.
Location has a price
Proximity to the Congress Centre and the Promenade is the single biggest driver of demand — see What's Available for how distance actually varies, property to property, once you're past the first few hundred metres. A property ten minutes out competes with a much smaller pool of buyers than one that's a five-minute walk from the door.
The January premium
Comparing a Forum-week quote to what the same property costs on a normal January weekend is close to meaningless — it's not the same market. Many properties are let for the whole week rather than night by night, and the buyer pool is corporate delegations and companies with a fixed budget line, not individual skiers shopping around. The usual seasonal logic doesn't transfer.
The hidden costs
The headline figure is rarely the whole story. Worth confirming before you commit to anything:
- Minimum stay requirements — often the full week, not a night-by-night rate
- Deposits — on the properties we track, these run anywhere from CHF 1,000 to CHF 2,000 where a figure has been given
- Cleaning fees — CHF 450–650 where specified; included in the price on some listings, added on others
- Service charges or taxes that may or may not be in the headline number
- Transport — what it actually costs to move around once the roads and checkpoints are in place
- Cancellation terms, which can be considerably stricter than a normal booking
Figures above are drawn from the properties currently known to Davos Access — see What's Available for the per-property detail, and Before You Book for what to check before you pay anything.