Two decades of operating at the World Economic Forum, and still learning.
By Thomas Hald
This January will be my 20th year working on the ground in Davos.
That number surprises me, honestly. The memories feel closer than they are. Maybe it’s because every year is different, or because no matter how much prep you do, that place finds a way to test it. You don’t get to coast there. Davos isn’t built for that.
It’s a strange mix of high-level decision-making, chaotic logistics, and bitter cold that can derail even the most meticulous schedule. I’ve watched entire plans dissolve in minutes because of fog, motorcades, or badge errors. The stakes are always high, the room for error is always small, and the margin of success rests on coordination few people ever see.
What I’ve learned, more than anything, is that protection alone is not enough. You have to orchestrate. It’s not just about safety. It’s about time. Precision. Energy. Reputation. All the things your principal doesn’t have space to worry about, but still depend on being managed well.
What’s Changed
In the early 2000s, Davos had friction, sure, but it was predictable. The structure of the event held steady, and you had time to adapt when things shifted.
That’s gone now.
The scale of attention has grown. So has the complexity. Protest movements have gotten smarter. Activists are blending into service roles. Last year we watched a small group use catering uniforms to bypass outer security and stage a coordinated disruption. They weren’t amateurs. They knew the terrain.
This year, the power transition at the Forum has added another layer of unpredictability. Internal processes could be slower. We expect that communication from the center will have more gaps. If you’ve been relying on the old ways, expecting consistency from the host organization, you might just be surprised.
Davos doesn’t reward well-dressed plans anymore. It rewards systems that bend without breaking.
What Orchestration Looks Like in Real Life
Let me say this plainly. Orchestration is not just stacking services. It’s the invisible mesh that holds those services together when things go sideways.
If your secure transport is perfect, but your EP agent doesn’t know where the temporary road closures are, the principal ends up waiting in the snow. If your intelligence team picks up on a protest, but the info doesn’t reach your ground team fast enough, your timeline explodes.
It’s not about having good pieces. It’s about how those pieces move in sync, with minimal friction and maximum readiness.
Five Areas That Matter Most
After 20 years, I’ve come to trust a rhythm. These five areas define whether the week runs well or runs you over.
Executive Protection
Protection in Davos is less about close formations and more about friction removal. The badge issue. The delayed credential. The schedule that shifts every 45 minutes. A good agent doesn’t just protect, they see the pivots coming. They know when to redirect a route before the motorcade clogs it. They see the journalist with the camera early. They don’t wait to be asked. They act.
Secure Transportation
No single plan survives contact with Davos traffic. You need more than one vehicle. You need credentialed local drivers who know how the road closures really work, not just what’s on paper. And you need people who have worked this loop enough times to know where the pressure builds before it shows up on a map.
A road that’s open at 8 in the morning might be closed by 10 without warning. A drop point that worked fine yesterday might get shifted by police because a motorcade is coming through. We’ve seen one wrong turn turn into a 40-minute loop. That’s not just a hassle. That’s a missed panel, a broken media slot, or a negotiation that doesn’t happen.
Helicopters help, but they aren’t a magic fix. Weather grounds flights all the time due to fog, wind, snow, or just too many birds in the air at once. You have to plan as if your helo won’t fly, even if you think it will. And if it does fly, you still need someone waiting at the pad who knows the handoff and understands the rhythm of the day. We’ve heard stories of other clients that land early and stand in the cold for ten minutes because someone else forgot to track a shift in the flight window.
Getting this right means you don’t just have a transport plan. You have a transport system. Vehicles with overlap. Drivers who communicate. Floaters for the inevitable curveball. Helicopter plans with clean transitions and weather contingencies. And one team managing the whole thing so your principal doesn’t feel the scramble that’s happening behind the curtain.
When it works, nobody notices. Which is exactly the point.
Accommodations and Badge Access
Most people underestimate the badge system. It’s not binary. Color matters. Timelines matter. Where you enter the cordon makes a difference. I’ve seen support staff stuck outside for hours because they didn’t realize they needed two different clearances for two adjacent venues.
Same goes for accommodations. If you don’t lock them early, you lose the ability to choose proximity. That loss shows up in missed windows and longer exposure on foot. Something as simple as where the main entrance is located can quietly throw off your timing, especially if it’s a longer walk than expected or hard to access by vehicle.
Static Security and Event Support
You might have a pop-up space, an off-site event, or a side meeting room that needs coverage. That’s not just a guarding post. It’s your brand on display. People notice if your security staff are aggressive, poorly briefed, or awkward in public-facing roles. You want maturity, personality skills, and presence. Not just someone with a radio and a windbreaker.
Field Intelligence That’s Present, Not Just Plugged In
There’s a big difference between monitoring Davos from a screen and actually walking it.
Our intelligence team is there, on the ground, in real time. They’re not pulling headlines or refreshing social media. They’re moving through the village, tracking routes, feeling the tension when crowds start to build, noticing when something doesn’t match the official line. That matters more than people think.
What makes our intelligence work is how connected it is. It’s not just analysts in a back room. It’s drivers calling in a delay before anyone else has eyes on it. It’s a guard near a checkpoint texting a heads-up about a crowd shift. It’s conversations at hotel security desks and quiet updates from inside venues. Sometimes it’s a client flagging something they heard in a meeting that we need to track down. Sometimes it’s WEF personnel giving us a quiet heads-up because they’ve worked with us before and trust how we handle things.
All of it flows into the ARC, our coordination and intelligence center. And all of it helps us move faster than anyone relying on the formal chain of updates.
If something is building, a protest, a disruption, a traffic backup, we usually get word through our network before it becomes obvious to the broader crowd. That gives our teams time to adapt. Often it means we simply avoid the problem. Not through heroics. Just by listening carefully and acting early.
And here’s something worth saying out loud. You don’t need to be using our vehicles or our protection teams to tap into this support. We understand that people come to Davos with pre-set arrangements. But if you want a real-time view of what’s happening and what’s shifting, we can provide that. Quietly. No posturing. Just good information from people who are close enough to know what matters and far enough ahead to help you stay out of the mess.
This kind of intelligence doesn’t come from a dashboard. It comes from being present. That’s the difference.
A Few Hard Lessons
You remember the ones that hurt. I still think about:
The agent who didn’t flag footwear. It sounds ridiculous, but one slip on ice led to a torn meniscus and a principal on crutches for three days. That changed how we prep for ground movement. We suggest you carry staged footwear, just in case.
The driver who arrived five minutes too early. Police made him circle. Twenty-seven minutes later, he still hadn’t made it back. The principal stood in sub-zero temperatures outside the hotel. That’s when we built the “three-minute roll call” system. Simple fix. Big result.
A drop-in protest that never made the news. It wasn’t dangerous. Just a minor confrontation with a known executive. But the photo went viral. That reshaped how we think about buffer zones and public approach paths. Even ten seconds of exposure can shift the optics.
The Takeaway
Davos has always been intense. But lately, it’s become more improvisational. The event still commands attention, but the infrastructure around it is creaking. You can’t expect things to work the way they did five years ago.
You need redundancy. Not because you’re paranoid but because you’re realistic.
And above all, you need integration. Not just good agents, or strong drivers, or sharp intel. You need them talking to each other, adjusting to each other, and responding to a common rhythm.
That’s what makes the difference between just getting through the week or actually delivering something the principal feels.
If you’re heading to Davos, don’t just prepare to protect.
Prepare to orchestrate.