By Michael Shields

DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters – The annual World Economic Forum meeting is this month. This rare event takes place in Davos. It’s the highest European ski resort.

The December meeting was postponed by organisers. It took place just prior to its January slot. This was due to the difficulty of hosting an in-person conference while the coronavirus epidemic was raging.

The simple act of putting on an event after two years is a welcome development for locals. A 2017 study found that they receive a $60 million per-event windfall.

The World Economic Forum will be returning to the area soon. “Everyone here is very happy about this,” said Rosenast. “It is yet another step back towards normality,” Samuel Rosenast spokesmen for the local tourism board.

The pandemic hit hotels and restaurants throughout Davos. The freshness and sun of Davos attracted sanatoriums to the area, which was featured in Thomas Mann’s novel “The Magic Mountain”.

Rosenast stated that “the whole congress business had died”, noting the fact that Davos’s conference center was closed for over a year.

Pop-up networking areas have been constructed by construction crews for business leaders and the political elite who will descend on the conference from May 22 to 26. Construction crews have been erecting security fencing.

To support the local police, up to 5,000 soldiers will be deployed by the Swiss government. For the enforcement of a no fly zone, aircraft force jets will circle again above.

According to Geneva’s WEF, the WEF will host more than 2,000 experts and leaders from across the globe. It is smaller than past WEF meetings. Because of the Ukraine conflict, no Russian government and corporate leaders were invited.

The agenda includes topics such as the recovery from the pandemic, combating climate change, future work, accelerating shareholder capitalism and harnessing the new technologies.

Svea Meyer is the owner of Café Klatsch, a cafe in Davos that caters to customers at the meeting.

She said, “It’s an enormous opportunity for us and it’s happy to see many of the WEF customers that we hadn’t seen in the past two years.”

“It’s more beneficial to have the WEF in spring than not,” she said. She also noted the good side of showing the warmer faces of places better known for their winter sports.

We don’t even have to shovel.