Getting Gouged at Davos

Andrew Ross Sorkin has an eyebrow-raising piece about the costs of attending the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting at Davos, Switzerland, which is going on this week (and to which we were not invited—because we at The Hourly G never get invited anywhere :( . . . (the ellipsis points are supposed to be bitter, bitter tears, BTW)).

The eyebrows go north as Sorkin looks into the cost of attending. As he explains:

There are several levels of membership: the basic level, which will get you one invitation to Davos, costs 50,000 Swiss francs, or about $52,000. The ticket itself is another 18,000 Swiss francs ($19,000), plus tax, bringing the total cost of membership and entrance fee to $71,000.

A couple of retirees,
bitching about the world at Davos.

The costs just go up from there: “Industry Partner” level will cost you $301,000 for two people, “Strategic Partner” will run $622,000 for a group of five people, one of whom has to be a woman (for the sake of “diversity”—let’s ask Silvio B. what kind of “diversity” he’ll be bringing to Davos!).

This all of course does not include the price of transportation, hotels, and throwing parties for clients or associates. All told, a group fo five from any large-ish sized company will be in the hole for easily $1 to $3 million.

Which is ironic, considering the following, extraordinarily telling quote from David Rothkopf in the Sorkin piece:

“As Steve Case, founder of AOL, once told me while standing at the bar in the middle of the hubbub of the main conference center: ‘You always feel like you are in the wrong place in Davos, like there is some better meeting going on somewhere in one of the hotels that you really ought to be at. Like the real Davos is happening in secret somewhere.’”

Well, at least we here at The Hourly G Command Central always make sure to end the night with at least one too-thin, too-slutty, too-young girlfriend or other. So I guess we’re doing better than the schmucks getting gouged at Davos!