Davos for Executive Assistants
Someone else's Davos week is your calendar problem. The panels and headlines aren't the hard part: the hard part is a schedule that looks reasonable on paper and falls apart the moment your principal is standing in snow between two venues that are further apart than the map says.
This page is the operational side: what actually breaks a Davos schedule, and how to build one that survives contact with the week. If you're building the substance of the week too (who to meet, what to attend), start with Davos for Founders or Davos for Startups, whichever matches who you're supporting.
Block calendar time for walking time, not map time
The single most common Davos scheduling mistake is trusting the map. Security checkpoints, packed-snow pavements and a Promenade full of people slow every walk down, and the First-Timer's Field Manual covers the real numbers behind that. For calendar-blocking purposes, the practical rule is simple: never book back-to-back meetings at opposite ends of town on foot. Davos Platz and Davos Dorf sit at either end of a six-kilometer stretch, too far to walk between meetings; take the RhB local train connecting them instead of trusting the map's walking estimate.
There's no single registration deadline
Every House, dinner and reception runs its own registration on its own timeline; there's no single Davos-wide date to work backward from. Some open lists months out and close early once full; others don't open until weeks before the week itself. The practical approach is to treat "registered" and "confirmed" as two different states, not one: a submitted registration is a request, not a guaranteed seat, until the host actually confirms it. Track both separately per invite rather than assuming registered means done.
The WEF Forum Shuttle is the one fixed exception worth knowing: seats need to be reserved through the delegation portal weeks in advance, and there are no walk-ups.
One calendar, one person owning conflicts
Anchor each day around three or four must-attend items, not a packed list: breakfast meeting, one or two daytime sessions, one evening event. Everything else is a maybe, slotted in only once the anchors are locked. When two confirmed invites overlap, decide and communicate the drop immediately rather than leaving it until the day. A host who finds out at the door is a worse outcome than a host who finds out a week earlier.
Keep a running note of which invites came through a personal relationship versus a general list: the first kind is worth protecting even at the cost of a bigger-name session on the same clock.
The two things people actually forget
Switzerland uses its own recessed power socket (type J), which a standard EU or UK adapter usually won't seat properly into. Pack a Swiss-specific adapter rather than relying on a hotel to have a spare. Cold weather also drains phone batteries faster than normal, worth a power bank in the bag for a full day of back-to-back meetings.
Footwear and outerwear are covered in full in the First-Timer's Field Manual, along with altitude and where to find a pharmacy. Worth reading in full before you pack, not just skimmed for this page's summary.
When you want someone local doing this with you
Our on-ground desk is a person, not a bot, and answers directly: useful for exactly the kind of question that doesn't fit a filter, like which of two overlapping invitations is actually worth keeping. Build My Personal Davos Plan is the fuller version: a complete week put together by someone who's done this before, handed back to you to manage rather than built out session by session on your own.
The rest of the logistics
Zurich and Basel routes into Davos, hotel-versus-apartment tradeoffs and the badge system in full are all covered on First-Timer's Field Manual and Where to stay, rather than repeated here.
Davos Access is independent and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the World Economic Forum. We do not issue, sell or arrange WEF accreditation.